


Something's Gotta Give

by TheLastGoodGoldfish



Category: Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Lawyers, F/M, Meet-Cute, Mutual Pining, New York AU, Past Abuse, Unrequited Love, holiday fic, romantic comedy typical fluff and angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-12 02:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13537503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLastGoodGoldfish/pseuds/TheLastGoodGoldfish
Summary: Veronica and Logan, five Decembers, five parties.(Or, the New York Lawyer Romantic Comedy AU that nobody asked for)





	1. One Fine Day (December 22nd, 2014)

 2014

 

 

It starts with a seven layer dip.

A beautiful, freshly unwrapped, unsullied seven layer dip on a table in a breakroom during an office Holiday party.

Not even _Veronica’s_ office Holiday party, actually: it’s the company party for Ross  & Rice P.C., the small non-profit law firm that has sucked Parker Lee into its sphere with promises of social justice and victim advocacy and housing equality and all that stuff that makes Parker’s bleeding heart go pitter-patter. Veronica is here this afternoon because—honestly, she’s not entirely sure why, except that in true Christmas miracle form, she got off work early, and when her roommate extended the enthusiastic invitation, there had been no apparent reason to decline. If nothing else: free food.

But then, ten minutes and half a plastic cup of cheap champagne in, one of Parker’s coworkers, Jackie Cook, arrived to whisk her away for some conference call that one of the partners invited them to sit in on. It’s a great opportunity for Parker, certainly— _invited by a partner and all_ —but it’s left Veronica in something of an uncomfortable position.

She’s planted herself in the kitchen, with clear access to sparkling wine and shortbread cookies, but also at the center of a flurry of competing distractions: Darlene Love on the stereo in the lobby, a tipsy paralegal’s impassioned rendition of _Hooked on a Feeling_ over the karaoke machine in the corner of the breakroom, what appears to be some kind of drinking competition involving tequila shots, and about a hundred different conversations between Parker’s office mates, in their varying degrees of holiday revelry.

The party has, by this time, merged with the rest of the building’s festivities, so the employees of the marketing firm upstairs, and the two law firms on the floors below have also flooded the suite. Consequently, what began two hours ago as a tidy affair between the fifteen employees of Ross & Rice, has become a crowded, noisy, pleasantly buzzed party in a jam-packed office.

And it’s certainly a very nice party, and Veronica would probably enjoy it a great deal, except that—with Parker (her roommate since law school) and Jackie (whom she’s met—maybe twice?) gone, Veronica doesn’t actually know anyone here, and it’s beginning to get a little awkward just standing here, watching strangers embarrass themselves singing classic pop.

So Veronica has just about decided to make an Irish exit and leave Parker to complain about it later, when she spots it, sitting there, with perfectly delineated levels and a pristine surface:

The newly unveiled seven layer dip.

The key to any seven layer dip, as everyone knows, is to get to it before it’s been picked over and all the levels are collapsing into one sloppy, unappetizing mess. Otherwise you get a plate full of ambiguously chunky sour cream, which, obviously, no one wants.

But this glass serving dish of evenly distributed ingredients hasn’t been _touched_. Even the guy who placed it on the table moments before only peeled back the plastic before becoming distracted by a platter of mini-sausages, so—basically, _score_.

Alright, okay, quick change of plans.

Veronica will swing by the table, snag some dip, enjoy that, and _then_ sneak out before Parker gets off her conference call. No sweat.

With great difficulty, she navigates through the dozens of professionals chanting enthusiastically along with the _ooga chakas_ in the karaoke song. She stops _en route_ only to pile tortilla chips onto a plate, because she’s got to be quick. Just _one_ clumsy oaf with an unsteady serving spoon could completely ruin this for her.

Not Veronica, though. She carefully segregates a clean square of the dip and conveys it to the center of her plate. She even peels the plastic back over the dish, to thwart flies. When she’s arranged the chips around the dip on her plate, Veronica collects her plastic champagne cup and prepares to leave space for the next person smart enough to line up behind her, because that’s the kind of thoughtful soul that she is.

Unfortunately, in beating her quick retreat, Veronica turns away from the table and barrels straight into something large and solid.

Something that turns out to be a human male.

A human male in the process of pouring himself a cup of champagne.

The wine splashes up all over his blue dress shirt, he breathes a barely audible, _“What the_ —”, and Veronica curses “Shit,” before the thought gets any further. She sets aside her own food at once and reaches around the guy to grab napkins from the counter behind him.

 _“Shit,_ ” she says again, and then, “I’m so sorry.”

“No, it’s...”

“Here, let me,” she speaks over him, as she snatches the now empty plastic cup from his hand and places it on the counter beside her chips and dip. She sets to work patting his shirt dry, completely embarrassed, so that she’s at it for several seconds before it comes to her attention that the chest underneath is broad and—really kind of rock solid.

Suddenly _that much more embarrassed_ , she glances up to see the immovable object to her unstoppable force.

He’s got brown eyes, which she notices before just about anything else. They’re dark and round, not especially annoyed, despite the fact that even Veronica’s limited knowledge of high-end male fashion is sufficient to alert her that this stained shirt is _expensive_. Nonetheless, whatever faint irritation she _does_ detect dissolves almost instantly when they lock eyes; his expression softens, and one corner of his mouth inches upward.

“Sorry,” she says again, to fill silence... not that it’s silent in the slightest, what with this silly song over the speaker, countless conversations, laughter and chatter filling up the air around them. His mumbled response, _“Not at all_ ,” is completely inaudible, and she’s only aware of it because she reads the words off his lips.

There’s something almost- _almost_ familiar about the guy—roughly her age, short brown hair, high forehead, straight nose, long, angular chin... like he’s handsome in a way that she’s seen somewhere before. Like maybe he reminds her of someone.

Another partygoer jostles her then, no doubt on a quest for the recently implicated seven-layer dip, but the action pushes Veronica rather closer to Immovable Object than is entirely proper for strangers, and she realizes she’d better get her act together.

The guy, for his part, swallows, and takes the napkins from her, finishing the pat down on his own. (Likely because she’s been neglecting the task in favor of checking him out. Oops. )

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, louder this time, so she can hear, “I’m sure it’s my karmic retribution. I was stealing wine.”

“I wouldn’t call it ‘stealing,’” says Veronica. “It _is_ a party. I think partaking is actually encouraged.”

“Yeah,” he says. “But I’m _technically_ crashing.”

 _Interesting. So he doesn’t work here either_.

Is he visiting someone? Does he work in the building? Is he on a date?

(No wedding ring... not that Veronica cares.)

“Yeah, well, me too,” she says. “Still. ‘Tis the season.”

Immovable Object with No Wedding Ring says something else, but she only catches the tail end, “— _ny on you?”—_ as the general party takes it upon themselves to sing along to the last chorus of the karaoke number, and the rest of his sentence is thus drowned out by everyone in the room being hooked on a feeling and high on believing.

“What’s that?” she calls back, and he repeats:

“I said, _did I get any on you_?”

“What?” _Oh, the champagne._ “I don’t...” She glances over her scarlet sweater and tartan skirt, and notices the smallest splash spot, but at least it’s not sour cream and guacamole. “Just a little...”

“Here.” He procures a few more napkins from the counter and hands them over, and she can barely decipher, “— _gan by the—_ ” over the applause that breaks out for the end of the song. (It wasn’t _that_ great; these people must be pretty drunk).

“What?”

“ _My name’s Logan by the way_ ,” he repeats, and Veronica balls up the napkins in her fist. Extends the other hand into the limited space between them.

“Veronica.”

_“Monica?”_

“ _Veronica!”_

“Veronica?”

“Yes!”

“Nice to meet you!”

“You too!”

As the excitement dies down and the Blue Suede devotee relinquishes the microphone to the next performer, there’s a brief respite, and Veronica takes it upon herself to refill Immovable Ob—uh, Logan’s cup. It is truly the least she can do, since she’s responsible for emptying said cup.

“Thanks. Hey, check it out...” He nods at the pair of new singers setting up at the karaoke stand, “Duet. I’ll bet you ten bucks they sing _Don’t Go Breaking My Heart_.”

Veronica follows his stare and laughs. Considers for a moment, then decides: “Double or nothing it’s _Ain’t No Mountain High Enough_.”

His eyes are bright with humor, and he holds out his hand to shake again. “Deal.”

They stay like that for a moment, waiting for the next song to pick up.

_“Baby when I met you there was peace unknown...”_

Veronica groans; Logan throws his head back and laughs. “ _What_?”

“How could we have predicted Kenny Rogers?”

“ _Islands in the Stream_? What _year_ is it?”

“Right?”

Logan grins; he twists back and picks up Veronica’s cup, offering it to her. “Y’know,” he points out, as she accepts, “You’d’ve made ten bucks if you’d just taken my bet.”

He wraps his hand around the neck of the champagne bottle and, off Veronica’s nod, tops off her drink. She watches the bubbles and foam in her cup, and when it’s filled, shrugs, nonchalant. Locks eyes with him, and, in her most shameless flirtation so far, says: “I’m a _no-guts-no-glory_ kinda girl.”

Logan nods slowly, as though turning this piece of information over in his head, then taps his plastic cup against hers in toast. “Noted.” He wets his lips with his tongue, and somehow Veronica expects the next words out of his mouth to be scandalous. But what he says is, “Ten bucks one of the next three songs is something from Disney.”

Her stomach does a funny little flop: she’s not sure if the reaction is thrilled or disappointed, but she doesn’t let on. “Twenty says it’s _Frozen_.”

 

* * *

 

“Okay, what about this guy?” asks Logan, as a would-be Joss Stone concludes (very flat), and the next drunk and daring karaoke aficionado takes up the mantle. It’s a slightly balding thirty-something, tall and pasty, and made pastier still by the fluorescent lighting of the breakroom. “I’m thinking—ironic Top 40s pop. Katy Perry, or Lady Gaga... maybe Shakira...”

Veronica studies the candidate, knowing she has mere seconds to make her own prediction before the song starts. “No. It’s gonna be... a kitschy 80s homage. A little too earnest. Maybe something from a soundtrack?”

The opening instrumental, melodramatic harpsichord, causes Logan to choke on his drink, and Veronica throws a victorious fist in the air, as this Greg-From-Accounting looking guy belts out, _If there’s something strange... in your neighborhood... who ya gonna call?_

“Oh my _God_.” says Logan, “Okay, that was impressive.”

“Told ya.”

“That’s three in a row. How are you doing that?”

“Hey, give yourself some credit,” says Veronica, pleased with the assessment, but magnanimous in victory, “You guessed the Vietnam War protest song lady, which I did _not_ see coming.”

“It was the sweater,” says Logan sagely. “All that wool just _screamed_ Pete Seeger. But...” His point is utterly muted by the audience participation of the callback, “ _Ghost! Busters!”_ and it gives Veronica an idea.

“Hey.” She jerks her head towards the door. “You wanna get out of here?”

“Um...”

“No! I mean, the room.” _Nice work, Mars. Real smooth._ “Not—I meant, like you want to leave the kitchen? It’s just that I’m gonna have this song stuck in my head all week if I listen through the first verse, and...”

Logan mercifully cuts her off. “Sure, yeah, let’s...”

“And bring the champagne.”

“I like the way you think.” He grabs the bottle and follows her out.

Because, come on, it’s not like picking up strangers at her best friend’s office party is a _habit_ for Veronica Mars. Neither is it one that she anticipates cultivating in the near future. 

All she really knows about this guy is that he’s attractive, some kind of party crasher, and has a wide breadth of knowledge vis-à-vis mainstream pop of prior decades—traits that aren’t much to go on, and certainly don’t preclude him from being a serial killer. But also he’s made her laugh repeatedly over the course of the last half hour, like _actually_ laugh, not just the awkwardly dutiful _A-Man-Has-Told-a-Joke_ Laugh (fortunate, because Veronica’s sucks), and that isn’t _irrelevant._

Plus, he _is_ attractive, and Veronica has had a faint, tingling warmth in the pit of her stomach since he first grinned at her in the kitchen, a fact that indicates nothing, because that isn’t how these things work, it’s not, you don’t get struck by lightning, it’s probably the champagne or the holiday spirit or the over-exposure to melodramatic 1980s love songs or—something. But it’s a feeling that she would like to chase.

Therefore, it might very well be the case that (figuratively) dragging a guy she just met into a corner of the office and planting herself on top of the table next to the copier is a touch “forward,” but Tall, Hot, and Logan isn’t complaining.

He pours her some more champagne and asks, “So did I understand that you, too, are a party crasher?”

“Sort of,” she says, “I was technically invited, I just don’t work in the building. My roommate is a second year here.”

“Gotcha.”

“What about you? Just here for the free booze?”

Logan shakes his head. “As irresistible as I find twelve-dollar champagne, I’m here to drop off a Christmas present for my friend Wallace. I guess there was some kind of all-important conference call, and I got shunted.”

“No kidding, I think I’m a victim of the same call. And I don’t actually know anyone else here.”

“So you were just... waiting for the karaoke machine?”

“Nope, I was waiting for some sucker to show up and place bets against me.” She crosses her leg at the knee, and leans back against the wall behind her. “I never do karaoke. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“That bad?”

“That good. It’d be the performative equivalent of bringing a gun to a knife fight.”

“Well now I kind of want to hear. And you owe me, since...” He gestures at his shirt, and Veronica shakes her head.

“I would hate to embarrass everyone else like that.”

Logan grins. “All right, scoot over,” he orders, then pushes himself up to sit on the counter beside her. “So what kind of law do you practice?”

Veronica raises her eyebrows. “Who says I’m a lawyer?”

“You’re at your lawyer friend’s lawyer party. No way would a civilian risk that.”

“Maybe I’m seeking representation. Or maybe I’m a golddigger.”

“Can’t be a golddigger, you play fast and loose with the betting.”

“It’s the long con, my friend,” she advises. “I’ve lulled you into a false sense of complacency.”

“Is that what the golddigger scene looks like these days? Should I be taking notes?”

“It couldn’t hurt.”

“See that’s the kind of talk...” He raises a speculative finger, “I’m gonna say: divorce attorney. Two thou an hour.”

She gasps with (mostly) false horror. “Just for that, no more golddigger con artist tips for you. I work in the D.A.’s office.”

This visibly piques his interest. “Here in Manhattan?”

“Uh-huh. What about you? Where do you practice?”

“Who says _I’m_ a lawyer?”

She flatters herself that the look she sends him adequately conveys _Are you kidding me_ , without actually verbalizing the message. Logan laughs.

“Legal Aid.”

 _Oh come on_. “Bullshit.”

Because he can’t _actually_ expect her to believe that.

—Or maybe he _does_ actually expect her to believe that, because he raises his eyebrows, like her reaction is somehow off base. “Oh come on, that’s gotta be bullshit,” she says.

At least he’s laughing when he asks, “Why does that gotta be bullshit?”

“You are not a public defender.”

“I’m not?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Off the top of my head? I could put a down-payment on a pre-War brownstone with what your watch probably costs.”

“Well I don’t know what to tell you, but...”

“Plus, I work In the D.A.’s office, and I would have remembered if I’d seen you around.”

“Oh yeah, why’s that?” (She ignores his smirking implication and sips her bubbly, waits for the truth.) “Okay, fine.”

“I knew it—”

“You don’t know anything,” scoffs Logan. “I _do_ technically work for Legal Aid, but—wow, you are so judgmental— _but_ I only got hired three days ago.”

“I see.” Veronica makes her study, then decides: “So you’re a reformed shark.”

Logan laughs again. “You are just so sure of yourself aren’t you?”

“Sullivan & Cromwell? Truman Mann? Preston Farris? Be honest now.”

“You should stick to guessing karaoke line ups,” says Logan, shaking his head. “I just moved here. Actually, you might be able to help me—since I’m new in town and all...”

“Aha, since you don’t really know anyone, you’re thinking maybe I could show you around, is that it?” asks Veronica with a grin, but Logan frowns and shakes his head.

“No, not at all—I was hoping your boyfriend might have a poker game I could join?”

“Wow.”

“Smooth?”

“No. Terrible. Does that _fake awkward_ thing ever work for you?”

“Not really, no. It’s implausible.”

“Because you’re just _so_ suave?”

“Yes, exactly, thank you.”

Veronica rolls her eyes, covers her smile with her drink. “Well, in that case, you should know: I prefer a direct approach.”

“Got it. Something like: do you have a boyfriend?”

“ _Or_ _‘_ do you have a girlfriend?’”

“Nope.” He looks entirely pleased with himself.

“Well, if we’re being direct, as of one month ago, I am single as well.”

_And well done, Veronica. Bring up the ex when chatting up a cute guy. Brilliant._

Logan’s eyebrows move again, but he doesn’t look too put off. “Where you the dump-er or the dump-ee?”

“That’s kind of a rude question.”

“You called me a shark.”

“A _reformed_ shark. And c’mon, it’s your whole look.”

“My _look_?”

“Are you trying to tell me you _don’t_ drive a BMW?” She seems to genuinely catch him by surprise with that one, which is hilarious because nothing has ever been so transparent, and she bursts out laughing. “You _totally_ do!”

“I can neither confirm nor...”

“Let me see your keys.” She holds out her hand, but Logan shakes his head.

“No.”

“If you’ve got nothing to hide, then you won’t have any problem showing me the keys...”

“I took a cab.”

“And you’re just going to break into your apartment later?”

“I can neither confirm nor...”

“Coward.”

“Bully.”

Veronica opens her mouth to protest, but then inspiration strikes again: “I have an idea.”

 

 

“You’re supposed to be the look out,” says Veronica, glancing away from her task just long enough to catch Logan watching her, predictably impressed.

“If you knew how poor my attention span is, you’d never have given me that assignment,” he replies, but casts a perfunctory look up and down the hallway to ensure that it is, in fact, vacant. Veronica shakes her head, then hears the gratifying _click_ of the door unlocking and extracts the hairpin from the knob. “Did they teach you that in law school?” asks Logan, as she climbs to her feet.

“High school, actually.” She pushes into the room that Parker so naïvely pointed out to her earlier, and Logan follows.

She hits the lights and illuminates the room at the center of which is one of the Ross & Rice office’s few luxuries—a lovely, dark wood regulation size pool table. “My roommate—the one who works here, showed me this earlier,” she says to Logan. “I guess it’s one of the partners’, but people come in here to blow off steam. They locked it up for the party in case people got too rowdy.”

“Nice table,” says Logan, walking around it to collect the pool cues from the rack on the far wall. “I thought this place was supposed to be one of those earnest non-profit types. The pay is crap but it looks real good on the résumé.” He frowns, pretends to consider, “Kind of like your job, right?”

“Oooh, fightin’ words from the court-ordered attorney. Bold choice there, buddy.” She rounds the table, takes the offered cue and chalk.

“Live fast, die young.” He chalks his cue. “So lock-picking, huh? That must’ve looked good on the college applications. Let me guess... Harvard undergrad.”

“Stanford,” she corrects.

“California ex-pat?”

“Born and bred.”

“Yeah? Me too.”

Veronica finishes prepping her cue stick and places the cube of blue chalk on the edge of the table. “I know.”

“You know?”

“You’ve got an accent. There’s basically an unspoken ‘Dude’ at the end of all your sentences. I bet you surf.”

“One bet at a time there, Detective.”

She shrugs. “If you insist. But don’t think just because you’re a fellow West Coaster I’m going easy on you.”

Logan just grins. He reaches into his pocket and extracts something that turns out to be a quarter, which he places flat in the palm of his hand. “Flip you for the break?”

 

 

Of course, he turns out to be good at this.

She’s known Logan for all of forty-five minutes, and she knew he would be.

He’s graceful on his feet, has long, strong limbs and precise hands. It doesn’t suck to watch.

More than that, though, she’s having _fun_ —just stupid, mindless fun, for the first time in probably too long. Dating as a grown-up isn’t like that; it’s always this civilized, buttoned up routine. Forced _._ Dinner or a movie or drinks at some poorly lit wine-bar-gastropub-whatever.

This is a much better way to get to know someone.

Not that this is a date or anything. This is just hanging out. But still.

(Seth was a notoriously sore loser. Veronica knew better than to play games with him unless they were on the same team, because it wasn’t worth the drama.)

They exchange résumés—Columbia Law for her, Chicago for him, after undergrad transferring from UCLA to NYU. He clerked for Judge Somebody-Something in Cook County, was “bored as shit,” and moved back to New York about a month ago. She considered the F.B.I., but decided she’d rather be the one who made sure the bad guys got locked away and ended up at the District Attorney’s office.

He sinks three stripes in a row and Veronica actually starts to worry she might _lose_ , before she hits two solids in immediate succession, and things start looking up. She’s pretty well set up to get the four ball in the right corner, but she could seriously mess up his positioning to hit the nine if she goes after the three instead. She weighs the pros and cons, but to deflect from the process, asks, “So what’s your deal anyway? You want to run for senate or something?”

“Huh?”

“The public defender schtick.” She squares up and focuses on the cue ball—it’s a risk, but he’ll definitely hit the nine if she doesn’t get defensive. “It’s got ‘political aspirations’ written all over it.”

Logan snorts. “God, no. Wouldn’t work anyway. I had a misspent youth.”

“Oooh, interesting. Petty theft?” She takes the shot. The cue ball glides into the nine, knocking it neatly into the three, which, tragically doesn’t land. Still, Logan’s table is significantly upset for his turn.

He obviously notices, because he sends her a dry look and says, “ _Cruel.”_

“Thems the breaks.”

He studies the table, making his own calculations even as he answers her question, “No one else wanted me, and I don’t have student loans.” He chooses, situates himself to go after the ten...

She’s pretty sure at least half of his story is bullshit, but of an acceptable variety.

 _Southern Californian, obviously. Inherited wealth, something flashy. Something public, maybe?_ Has _she seen him before?_

The thought doesn’t get the chance to take root, though. His stroke doesn’t land, just barely, but he takes it in stride. He straightens up, then leans against his cue as he turns to Veronica and asks, “So what’s the verdict, Detective?”

“Whatever do you mean?” But the innocent act doesn’t pass muster. She walks past him to grab the chalk, buys herself a minute, then gives her honest evaluation: “Los Angeles native. Rich parents, but it’s new money.” And for good measure, “Child of divorce?”

“Late adolescent of divorce, but close enough for government work.” He clears his throat. “Which I guess applies here.”

She simpers sarcastically, shifts to evaluate the table (which she really should have been doing all along). “Think you can do better?” she asks.

“You and your challenges. All right...” (He’s left her no clear targets, she notices, she’ll have to get creative.) “At least one parent in law enforcement.” (Not a fantastic prognostication, given her job. She decides to go after the three ball again). “Only child.” (Poker face up as she aligns herself for the stroke; no need to boost his confidence). “You broke up with your last boyfriend because he bored the hell out of you.”

Veronica takes her shot, a lovely stroke if she does say so herself, with the cue ball glancing off the rail and tapping the three ball right into the side pocket. She stands straight, then moves around to the opposite side rail; “The ex was an F.B.I. agent. Boring wasn’t his problem.”

“So what was his problem?”

“I don’t know.” She positions herself to put the five ball in the corner pocket. “ _He_ dumped _me_.”

“Doesn’t say much for the Bureau.”

Veronica smiles at that. She knows it’s just flirting but it still nice to hear. Not that she’ll let on: “Your lines could use some work, y’know.”

“It’s because I’m used to relying on my looks.”

“How’s that working out for you?” The five ball reaches its destination, and Veronica grins up at him.

Logan tilts his head, lounges against the side of the table. “No complaints.”

 

 

She wins by a single ball, and is gracious only until Logan suggests they go double or nothing. “Nuh-uh, fork ‘em over, Pal.” She strides over to his side of the table and holds out her hand expectantly, and Logan rolls his eyes, but grins all the while.

“You know you weren’t playing _for_ the car, right?” he says, but fishes the keys from his pocket and drops them into the palm of her waiting hand.

“ _Aha_.”

She gloatingly displays the telltale BMW logo on his key fob, but he just shakes his head and perches on the edge of the table.

“See?” she gloats. “Total shark. And just why do you have so many keys anyway?”

Logan grabs back the keychain. “Enough digging from you.” He replaces them in his pocket, withdraws a cell phone instead. He must not find anything very interesting there, because he slides it back into his pocket after a second and asks, “Go again?”

“Sure.” Veronica turns and begins to gather up the balls from their various pockets. “But we’ll have to up the stakes. Loser sings karaoke?”

“If you make me sing, we’re _all_ losers.”

“Where’d all the confidence and bravado go, hmmm?” He collects the eight and the twelve and rolls them across the table to her, and Veronica relents. “Fine.” And maybe it’s the champagne or the Holiday spirit or the high of being twenty-seven, healthy, happy, single, and working her dream job in the greatest city in the world, but she finds herself experiencing a burst of confidence: “Loser buys the first round of drinks?”

Logan rolls three more balls back to her, replies evenly, “Deal.”

 

 

“Dammit!”

He’s utterly good-natured about it, even when he’s cursing as she sinks the eight ball first—an incredibly narrow victory at the end of a hard fought game, and her relief bubbles over in the form of laughter.

“I really thought you had it,” she admits, shaking her bangs out of her eyes and exhaling with genuine relief. (What? she’s not pretending that _she’s_ a gracious loser either.) “I did _not_ count on you choking like that.”

“I did not choke,” Logan corrects, playfully indignant. “My—hand slipped.”

“Oh my God, your hand slipped, really?”

“Uh-huh.”

“ _Your hand slipped_. Wow.” She tosses the chalk cube at him, but he catches it mid-air. He balls it up in his fist and hides it under his chin, an unexpected quirk that makes her want to laugh again. Instead, she busies herself cleaning up the table and teasing Logan.

She’s scarcely begun, however, before she catches a faint buzzing sound, and reaches for a cell phone that isn’t there.

“It’s me,” says Logan, pulling out his own phone and flicking through the screen. He pauses to read a text, then announces, “Looks like they’re finally off their call.”

“Perfect timing.” Veronica frowns at the table. “We should probably erase the evidence before someone catches us.”

“Good call, I’m not trying to get anyone fired.”

There’s a bit of a scramble getting everything put back in its place. Then, when Logan’s out in the corridor, Veronica switches off the lights and locks up behind them. This particular stretch of hallway—a short row, with only two offices—remains clear when they make their exit, so their misdemeanor seems to have gone undetected. Logan had the presence of mind to grab the mostly empty champagne bottle and cups, so Veronica’s pretty sure they got away with it.

“I’ve gotta drop off these tickets,” says Logan, when they reach the end of the hall and stand on the threshold to the central lobby. “But then...” He trails off, leaving it up to her...

“We’ll circle back?” Veronica suggests, feeling ridiculously brave for such an inexplicit proposition.

Logan pauses, nods, repeats: “We’ll circle back.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“Oh—here, let me take those for you.” She retrieves the bottle and cups from him, “I’ll get rid of these, you go run your errand, and we’ll...”

“Circle back.”

“Right.”

With a quick nod, he departs, and Veronica feels herself smiling.

Probably, she looks like an idiot. Probably, she should snap out of it.

She clears her throat uselessly and regroups: so—job one is find the trashcan for the bottle. Then find a bathroom, then find Parker.

 

* * *

 

 

He met a girl.

He met a girl and she’s crazy smart and crazy hot, and for some reason, his head feels incredibly light. Logan doesn’t actually skip to go find Jackie, because he’s still trying to keep some semblance of composure, but it’s definitely a resisted impulse.

He spots his friend lingering in the doorway of one of the offices, chatting with a tall blonde in a navy pantsuit, and he catches the tail end of a conversation. Jackie’s mentioning that her husband is on his way over, while the blonde nods and types one handed on an iPhone, so Logan doesn’t feel too rude tapping his friend on the shoulder and interrupting.

Jackie turns and greets him with a smile, offers her cheek for a peck, saying, “Hey, I wasn’t expecting...” But then she breaks off and turns back to her friend, the blonde. “Sorry, Logan this is Parker, Parker this is Logan.”

“So nice to meet you,” says Parker, barely glancing up from her phone. “Unfortunately, I gotta run. Cook, you kicked ass back there.”

Jackie grins, self-satisfied, because she knows it’s true. “Thanks, you too.”

“See ya, Merry Christmas.” Parker the Blonde is already walking away, though, and Jackie doesn’t even bother to respond, just turns back to Logan.

“I wasn’t actually expecting you to stick around,” she says. “You could’ve just left the tickets in my office.”

“And I _would_ have, if you’d told me where your office _is_.”

“Oh.” Jackie grimaces. “Right.”

—Not that Logan is even remotely sorry that he stayed. “Anyway,” he says, withdrawing the envelope containing Wallace’s Christmas present from his pants pocket, “Here you go. Thursday night, courtside, you’ll be in spitting distance of Jay-Z.”

Jackie snatches up the envelope. “Think Beyoncé will be there?”

“You know I don’t make promises about Beyoncé’s schedule.”

“Well, thanks.” She opens the envelope, glances at the tickets inside, and then looks back up to Logan. “Hey, you should come to dinner with us. Wallace’ll be here in a minute, and Alicia’s in town, so she’s watching the kids tonight.”

“You want me to third wheel your date? Wow, tempting, but...”

“The word ‘date’ leaves your vocabulary the second you get married,” says Jackie. “It’ll be like the old days. The three of us can get drunk in a bar and be really bad at shuffle board.”

“Except now you two won’t be pining after each other the whole time.”

“We did not _pine_.”

“The _angst,_ Cook _._ It was unbearable.”

“I take it back, you are uninvited from date night,” says Jackie, folding her arms and leveling him with her patented Jackie Cook Glare: the one he got good and used to whenever he was being an idiot in law school. Which was—y’know, a fair amount.

Logan’s built up a slight tolerance to The Glare, though, so he just replies, “Good. Because I am _not_ married, and I met a girl, and I think I have an _actual_ date.”

Jackie raises her eyebrows. “You met a girl? When?”

“Just now.”

“Just now? Here?”

“Uh-huh.”

Immediately suspicious: “What girl?”

“She doesn’t work here. Her name’s Veronica.”

“Veronica?” Jackie considers it for a second. “Oh, I bet it’s Parker’s friend. Veronica Mars.”

 _Veronica Mars_. Logan realizes abruptly that he didn’t actually know her last name until just now. _Veronica Mars._

It’s a great name. It suits her so perfectly.

“Typical,” sighs Jackie, shaking her head. “I leave you alone for two seconds and you attach yourself to some blonde. Careful, though, Echolls, she’s a prosecutor.”

“I know, but I think I can look past it.”

“How benevolent.” She shakes the envelope and the Nets tickets contained therein. “Thanks for these. Be good, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Which includes _what_ exactly?”

“Get out of here before I uninvite you from Christmas.”

Logan waves goodbye and turns back. The strange and absurd giddy feeling from before begins to percolate again, and he really has to get it under control (he shoves his hands into his pockets to keep from fidgeting), or he’s going to make a complete idiot of himself. He’ll be the first to admit that he’s been running a full charm offensive since… well, basically since Veronica Mars spilled sparkling wine all over the front of his shirt and batted her blue eyes at him—Logan’s a sucker like that—but this girl’s met him shot for shot so far, and he’s got to be on his toes just to keep up.

He steps rapidly, keeps an eye out for her as he goes.

 _Veronica Mars_.

It really is a great name.

 

 

 

Veronica performs a quick inspection in the mirror over the sink. Her face looks all washed out in the white bulb bathroom light, except for little shoots of pink in her cheeks, probably from the wine. She wishes she had some powder or lip gloss to touch up, but all that stuff is in her purse in Parker’s office, so for now, she settles with fluffing out her hair and checking her teeth for lingering cilantro (none, thank God).

At least she wore a kind of cute outfit today: a red sweater with a plaid pencil skirt, not at all her usual work attire, she doesn’t know what inspired the fortuitous bout of festivity. After a moment’s fussing, trying to get her bangs to hang right— _break-up bangs: always a mistake, when will she learn?—_ Veronica resigns herself to her appearance as is and pushes out back into the lobby.

She’s not one hundred percent sure, but she’s fairly certain that she has a date.

That’s what this is, right? She is _kind_ of out of practice with the whole “dating” thing, and, as embarrassing as it is to find herself asking this question at the age of twenty-seven: how else are these things supposed to work?

Seth dumped her a month ago, and they’d been together over a year. Before that was law school, before _that_ was college—and the whole experience was honestly so much easier in the academic setting.

(God knows she isn’t going to try the internet. There’s an intern in her office who’s been telling her to use something called “Tinder,” but it sounds _awful_ , and why do people keep trying to interfere with her love life, anyway?)

It’s just drinks. Maybe dinner.

It’s not like Veronica is going home with him or anything.

And on a totally unrelated note, did she shave her legs this morning?

She basically collides with Parker outside her friend’s office, as Parker is characteristically distracted—in this case, by her cell phone, a cup of champagne, and a binder the size of her head.

“Holy shi—oh hey, girlie, you stayed!” Parker immediately hands off the champagne and rearranges the other items in her arms. “I thought for _sure_ you’d bail. The call was—well, pretty much exactly what you’d expect, but a _senior_ _partner_ wanted me to sit in, _so—_ that was kind of awesome. Did you have fun?”

Parker says it all so quickly, Veronica barely has time to come to terms with the fact that she’s now responsible for the plastic cup placed in her grasp, before she is expected to respond. “Yeah. Yeah it was—fine. It was actually—pretty okay.”

Parker stops buzzing for a moment, perks up like a puppy who’s heard the mailman. “ _Pretty okay_?” she echoes.

“Yeah.” And since there’s no point in concealing it: “I kind of... met someone?”

_“Kind of met someone?”_

“I don’t know, it was...”

“Who? A guy? A girl? Do you like them? Is it that cute guy from upstairs who always wears ironic ties _?”_

“No, it’s—ironic ties? Is that a thing? No. _No._ He’s—he doesn’t even work here, actually. We were just hanging out.” Under Parker’s aggressively interested stare, Veronica is suddenly self-conscious: “His name’s Logan.”

“ _Oooh_ , _Lo-gan_ , that’s a...” Parker breaks off. Closes her mouth, opens it again, then closes it once more and frowns. Cocks her head like she’s spontaneously decided to contemplate the mysteries of the universe, and then reverts back to Veronica: “Logan? Logan what?” Fortunately, before Veronica must confess that she doesn’t actually know his surname, Parker rushes on, “Is he tall? Brown hair, brown eyes, blue shirt?”

“Uh—yes?”

“Oh my God.” Parker grabs her elbow and nearly causes catastrophe with the champagne as she needlessly ushers Veronica a few steps backward into her office. Stage whispers, “That’s Jackie’s _husband_!”

“ _What_?”

“Logan is Jackie’s husband!” Parker reiterates. “She just introduced me to him, like—twelve seconds ago.”

“Jackie’s husband? Jackie Cook your coworker’s husband?”

“Uh-huh!”

“What? _No._ ”

“Yes!”

Veronica tries to wrap her brain around it, really she does, but, “That doesn’t even—he’s from Chicago.”

“That’s where Jackie went to law school!”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously!”

No. Just—no. Parker has to be confused. She is the most distractible person on the planet, maybe she—

“Oh, look!” Parker grabs Veronica’s arm, nearly topples the champagne cup again as she tugs her the rest of the way into the office, uses the other hand to point around the threshold into the lobby. “Right there. That guy!”

And...

Yep.

Parker’s pointing at Logan all right. He’s checking his phone and collecting a black coat from the hooks by the door, and Veronica suddenly feels nauseous.

Well, he said he didn’t have a girlfriend.

Didn’t indicate anything about a _wife_.

“Son of a _bitch_.”

Parker watches her with wide blue-eyed concern, and Veronica sort of wishes the ground would swallow her up right here right now.

“So... did he like… flirt with you or something?” Parker asks, and Veronica once again flatters herself that the look she sends Parker’s way speaks for itself. “I’m just saying, maybe you misinterpreted... okay, I’m going to judge by your facial expression that I should stop talking.”

“ _Wise_ decision _,_ Lee."

Parker lays a consoling hand on Veronica’s shoulder and kind of pats the spot, but it does absolutely nothing to abate her—what? Anger? Humiliation?

That _asshole_.

How could she be so _stupid—_

“Parker.” She turns to her friend. “Are you _absolutely,_ one-hundred percent, beyond a shadow of a doubt certain that Jackie introduced _that_ person to you as her husband? She said ‘husband.’ She wasn’t like—being facetious or something?”

“ _No_ ,” insists Parker. “Jackie was like, ‘ _oh, my husband is coming, and here he is, and his name is Logan,’_ and then we were like ‘ _nice to meet you,’_ and we shook hands, and then I said ‘ _bye Merry Christmas’_ and came over here.”

Son of a _goddamn_ bitch.

Parker frowns. “So did you guys, like... do anything?”

“Parker, I met him ninety minutes ago.”

“Well I don’t know! No judgment, maybe you were feeling adventurous!”

Veronica would point out that for _her,_ “adventurous” is spending ninety minutes with a guy at a party and then agreeing to get a drink with him, but she’s already feeling the early twinges of a headache, so she doesn’t bother. She needs to get out of this stupid party _pronto_. “Look, I’m gonna go...”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” sighs Parker. Then, because she can’t quite help herself: “Before you hit on anyone else’s spouse...”

“ _Parker_.”

“Too soon?”

“ _Way_ too soon.”

“I’m _sorry_.” She musters up a slightly more sympathetic tone and says, “We’ll go home, okay? We can get drunk on dessert wine and yell at Lifetime movies together.”

Veronica sighs.

Yeah, that sounds about right. What else is she gonna do? Go back to the apartment and go to bed and think about how her boyfriend dumped her because she’s bitchy and difficult, and how apparently, she’s instinctively attracted to Jerk Sleazeballs?

“Fine,” she agrees. “Just—let’s hurry up, okay?”

“Uh-huh, I’ll make sure that the coast is clear and give _this_ to Joel...” She pats the giant binder currently resting against her hip, “...and then we’ll peace out of here, kay?”

“Mhm.”

Parker peaks out of the office, dramatically looks both ways, then checks Veronica over her shoulder with a thumbs up. She’s maybe three strides out, before she twirls back and stalks back into the office. “Just one thing real quick: maybe while I’m gone don’t... taser anyone?”

Veronica rolls her eyes. “I won’t tase him.”

“It’s not that he doesn’t deserve it...”

“Parker...”

“I just really like this job and...”

“Parker, I’ll be fine, just _go_.”

Parker mouths _thank-you_ , then skips off again. Veronica sets down the champagne cup she’s still inexplicably holding and retrieves her coat and purse from the chair behind Parker’s desk. As she shrugs into the former and retrieves her cell from the latter, she tries to solve the annoying little mystery and comes up—pretty much blank. What, this guy just picks up random women at his wife’s _work_?

It doesn’t make sense. Maybe Parker is confused somehow. Ergh... maybe they have some kind of arrangement? But then you don’t _lie_ about being single, _come on_.

She checks her texts (one from her dad, one from Chelsea at work) and counts up all the lies he would have had to have told in the last hour... and yep, all signs point to _Jerk Sleazeball_. Parker _really_ should say something, because...

“Hi.”

...Because he’s standing behind her. So much for her plan to lie low.

She inhales and counts to five. Then she kills another few seconds wondering if counting to five has ever actually worked for anyone.

She pulls her purse up over her shoulder and turns around to face him, and there he is being all... smug and jerky and _married_. Leaning against the doorframe, coat slung over his arm like he’s picking up Keira Knightley in a perfume commercial, _christsakes_.

For whatever reason, seeing him now just... _completely solidifies_ her belief that he’s a lying son of a bitch. Because of _course_ he is.

Good guys don’t just waltz effortlessly into your life. That isn’t how the world operates. He’s been charming and smooth all night: of _course_ it’s bullshit, how did she not see right through that? It’s fucking embarrassing is what it is, and it’s only the want of a taser that stops her from breaking her promise to Parker right here and now.

“Hi,” she replies, completely flat. Weighing her options. Trying, albeit not very hard, to keep her cool. All she has to do is tell him that she’s not interested and then leave. Easy-peasy. No sweat.

He’s wearing that same smile— _smirk_ —that he’s worn all night, that she thought was charming ten minutes ago but now realizes is completely douchey. _Asshole._

He tricked her. He tricked her into liking him, and Veronica _hates_ being tricked.

“So,” he goes on (and he _really_ must practice this shit, Jesus Christ), “Did you want to get that drink?”

And _fuck it._

Veronica sees red.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #9 (almost) - Logan and Veronica meet at a Christmas party and hook up for the first time.


	2. Everybody's Gotta Pay Some Dues (December 23rd, 2015)

 

2015

 

 

“Echolls. Always a pleasure.”

Dunlap only sounds half sarcastic as he offers the pleasantry and extends his hand over his desk, and Logan takes it with roughly the same sincerity-irony ratio. Mike’s not happy about the deal, but he probably thinks it’s the best he can do for the least amount of work, and he might not be wrong.

Logan could take it or leave it, but he’ll at least play messenger to the client, because—well, because he’s legally obligated to, for one. Anyway, it’s seven o’clock, two days before Christmas, and he’s not going to get anything better tonight, so he grips the proffered hand and says, “Same to you, Mike,” and, after the briefest exchange of holiday-relevant civilities, Logan’s on his way out.

On to the next thing:

Dinner, probably, as he makes his way across the complex maze of offices. One Hogan Place is quiet tonight, though not as quiet as one might expect, given the season and the hour.

He’ll have to grab something to eat on the way home; his fridge is empty. Maybe Mario’s, since it’s on the way—even though half the city is on his way, _why does he have to live so far uptown_?

Carrie’s flight gets in early tomorrow—nine or nine thirty, he should check the itinerary—so he’ll have a late night tonight looking over the two new files that just landed on his desk.

He maneuvers out through the lobby of the D.A.’s offices and into the elevator annex, reviewing next steps. Call the client—Abigail—first thing in the morning. They’ll want to respond quickly either way, before the new year for sure. Ideally before Christmas, but she might need more time to think it over. It’ll have to be Monday morning, then, maybe he’ll catch Dunlap nursing a hangover.

He climbs onto an elevator, then punches the _down_ button and pulls out his phone to check Carrie’s itinerary— _he really should make sure there’s something in the fridge before she gets in_. Consequently, Logan is distracted and doesn’t notice the woman rushing toward him until the doors are closing, and she calls, “ _Hold the elevator!_ ”

He reaches out and stops the doors on instinct, and the woman slips past him with a breathless, “Thanks!”

It’s not until she’s run a hand through her blond hair and is turning to say, “Second floor please,” that they make eye contact and recognition hits.

_Well, fuck._

All the color immediately drains from Veronica Mars’s face, and Logan can only assume he’s matching her expression, because the panic that he reads off her is pretty much identical to what he’s feeling.

Well—never let it be said that he doesn’t leave an impression.

“Hi,” he says, because it seems strange not to.

Or maybe he shouldn’t say anything? She made it pretty clear the first and last time they interacted—at the Ross & Rice holiday party... God, that must be a year ago now—that she had no interest in their continued acquaintance.

Which is—whatever. Within her rights, certainly.

It’s an episode that Logan has revisited many times with no small amount of confusion over the course of the last year. How exactly he managed to misread things so totally—it boggles the mind.

One minute, everything was good. Better than good: _great._ They were laughing and flirting and playing pool—they made plans to get a drink... hell, she was the one who brought it up (and that’s the part that he can never figure out... _she asked_ him _out first!_ ), but then when he’d circled back to her, just five minutes later, her entire demeanor had shifted.

She’d been short and cold when she told him _no she would not like to get a drink with him_ , which had thrown him a little, but was _nothing_ compared to her reaction when he asked if he could give her his number.

She did _not_ like that at all. She threw a drink in his face. Like, honest to God, picked up a cup of champagne and tossed it in his face like she was Lana Turner.

Then she had a few choice words for him, and a few more besides when Logan had wanted to know _what the hell was wrong with her?_ , all in all acting as though he were some kind of fedora-wearing pick-up artist, feeling up women in a tacky wine bar: a character that Logan has always made a point of _not_ being.

Unfortunately, she’d stormed out before he could ask her to fill out a comment card, and Jackie’s feedback was, _It’s called striking out, Echolls, quit your bitching and move on_ , so—the whole thing has just been a source of confusion and embarrassment for some time, and as curious as he is about where exactly he went wrong, Logan’s pretty sure it’s not Veronica Mars’s job to set him straight.

Still, he’ll admit to no small feeling of relief when she responds to his greeting with an equally stilted, “Hi,” if for no other reason than it’s better than a slew of profanities. She blinks a couple of times, a nonverbal _oh shit,_ of sorts. She opens her mouth to speak again, but all that comes out is another “Hi.”

Logan clears his throat and remembers that he hasn’t hit the button for her, and he’s kind of impeding the path there. “Sorry—what floor was it?”

“Two.”

“Right.”

He presses the button, and the doors close. They stand awkwardly side by side for a few brief seconds, while Logan debates instigating further dialogue. The elevator doors are, unfortunately, mirrored, so he can’t really help seeing Veronica’s reflection.

She looks—the same. More or less. The hair’s a little different, straighter and shorter, and she’s grown out the bangs. She’s dressed more for work (logically enough) in a black button-up blouse and slacks, and she’s buzzing with nervous energy. He really not sure why—it’s a little disconcerting that she’s so uncomfortable, but if she thinks he’s going to make a scene in an elevator, she’s sorely mistaken. He’s no saint, but he’d like to think he’s not completely detestable.

The elevator _dings_ onto the second floor, and Veronica takes a step towards the exit.

It’s his last chance to say anything, she’s almost gone...

She steps off the elevator and the doors start to close...

Logan sticks his arm out to stop them once again, “Look, I’m really sorry about...” he begins to say, then realize that she’s _also_ holding the door, having turned back, and is rambling another version of his words back to him, “I owe you an apology.”

Logan breaks off, not entirely sure what this means. “No,” he says, when she offers no explanation, “You don’t owe me anything. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have...”

“Logan,” she interrupts, surprise etched into every line of her face. “Are you—you’re apologizing to _me_?”

“Um... yes?”

She blinks a few more times. “ _You_ are apologizing. To _me_.”

“Yes?”

“To me?”

“Still yes.”

“For the Christmas party at Ross & Rice.”

“Yes.”

“Last year.”

“I think it’s pretty clear we’re talking about the same event.”

She continues to hold the door and to stare, giving nothing away. She must _clean up_ at poker. The silence stretches for another few seconds, while she gets the last of her stony-faced recalcitrance out of her system. Then she begins to laugh. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

And seriously, _what_ is this woman’s deal?

“What?” he asks, not his most intelligent response, but a sincere one.

Veronica shakes her head, and, with the hand not holding the elevator door, she waves him out into the hallway. “Come on,” she says. “There’s... it’s kind of a long story.”

Logan doesn’t move. “ _What’s_ kind of a long story?”

She raises her eyebrows. “What, you’re just going to stand there?” When he doesn’t move, she shifts her weight and sighs. “I promise I won’t bite. Or—cuss at you. Or throw a drink in your face, or call you any names.” She jerks her head over her shoulder, “My office is just right here.”

“Said the spider to the fly.”

Veronica smiles, evidently sensing that he’s about to cave. She releases the door and says, “Are you coming or not?”

Of course, he’s so curious, there was never any question.

Her office is small and inconveniently located, probably not prime real estate, but at least she doesn’t have to share it, as there’s only the one desk, only her name, _V. Mars,_ on the bronze plaque by the door. The inside is tidy but cramped—walls lined with books, and a desk buried beneath dozens of neat stacks of file folders. There’s a window with a view of the street, and a space heater is plugged into the wall in the corner.

Veronica sits down on the far side of the desk, Logan in the guest’s chair.

What follows is a very confusing narrative of poor communication and significant conclusion jumping, and by the end of it, Logan’s not sure that he’s any more enlightened than he was at the beginning.

The best he can do is:

“So what you’re saying is that when I was in the other room, your friend...”

“Parker.”

“…Parker, somehow got it into her head...”

“—She can be a very bad listener—”

“—That I was married to Jackie Cook—”

“Yes.”

“—And so you thought—”

“—That you were a giant sleaze, basically—”

“—Who goes around hitting on random women at his wife’s work?”

“—Like a _really_ giant sleaze.”

Logan nods. That—honestly, kind of tracks: it’s not like he hasn’t seen his own flesh and blood make that exact move. Still, just for clarity’s sake, he feels the need to point out: “I’m not married to Jackie...”

“I realize that now.”

“Jackie’s married to my friend Wallace.”

“Yeah...”

“I introduced them.”

“But see I thought...”

“That I was a giant sleaze who goes around hitting on random women at my wife’s work.”

Veronica winces. At least the color’s returned to her face now; she’s blushing like crazy. “Yes.”

Logan lets out a low whistle, but the pieces have mostly fallen in the place now. “Alright, I’m caught up. Makes sense.” He leans back in his chair, fights the impulse to put his feet on her desk, even though he feels he’s earned the right at this point. “I mean, it doesn’t make sense, but it—makes sense. And you’re right,” he says. “That is _really_ stupid.” Like, top ten stupidest moments of his life, truly. “Explains the champagne in the face, though.”

If possible, Veronica Mars’s blush gets darker. “I’m— _really, really_ sorry. I felt _terrible_ when I found out.”

Logan chuckles. He can’t deny that there is a pretty significant amount of humor to the situation. “How’d you figure it out?”

“Parker met Jackie’s _actual_ husband about a week later,” she tells him. “She noticed that you two were obviously not the same person...”

“Because of the height difference?”

Veronica rolls her eyes. “Exactly. Anyway... I wanted to send you a note to apologize, but…” she trails off. Logan folds his hands over his stomach, raises his eyebrows.

“But...?”

“I mean by that time so much time had passed. Parker didn’t even tell _me_ she’d screwed up for like... three months...”

“I see—and the statute of limitations on these kinds of things is historically… what? Sixty days?”

She looks truly apologetic. “I was embarrassed,” she admits. “You thought I was crazy, obviously, and—I was trying to forget that the whole night happened at all. I was kind of surprised there wasn’t more blowback, to be honest; I thought you’d at least tell Jackie that her acquaintances are batshit and that Parker would be pissed at me.”

Logan chuckles. “I did complain, a little, but Jackie just assumed it was my fault.”

“I knew I liked her,” says Veronica, smiling all angelic for a moment, before she grows serious again. “But—really. I’m sorry.”

Logan sighs. Because at this point, is he really going to hold it against her?

“Bygones,” he says, and waves it off.

“Thank you.” She smiles at him, and Logan doesn’t think that he’s wrong to admit that she’s every bit as cute as he’d remembered. The bright, knowing blue eyes, sarcastic tilt of her lips—pretty in her deep red lipstick.

It’s disappointing.

Everything worked out, of course. He’s not going to _dwell_ or anything, but it’s just such a stupid thing to have happened, and for a moment, he thinks she’s probably reaching the same conclusion. The smile drops just slightly, and he wonders if she’s feeling the same flicker of regret.

He’d—really liked her.

“Do you want a beer?” she asks suddenly.

Truthfully... kind of.

However, given their somewhat complicated (if brief) history, Logan feels that some disclosures are necessary. No matter what Veronica Mars of 2014 might have thought, he’s _really_ not the type of guy to actively withhold a relationship status.

“Actually... I should... I’m—kind of seeing someone right now.”

Veronica shakes her head, dismissive. “Me too. This time I actually _wasn’t_ hitting on you, though.”

“Hitting on me, huh?” he echoes, teasing. “Is that what you were doing last time?”

“I didn’t think I was being subtle.”

“Well neither did I, but then the champagne and profanities gave me pause.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Veronica goes on purposefully, “there’s a couple beers left in the kitchen from the staff holiday party, and I’m going to be stuck here for the foreseeable future...” she gestures at the organized chaos of her desk, “...so I could use a break. Plus, I probably I owe you one. All above board.”

She holds up her hand, scouts honor style, and that’s good enough for Logan.

“Sure,” he says, “I’ll take a beer.”

 

A pair of Stellas are procured from the nearby breakroom, and after Logan’s perfunctory _how the other half lives_ joke, Veronica takes her seat on the opposite side of the desk once more. She swallows a long pull from her bottle, then sets it down in front of her and asks of Logan, “So what brings you into the _halls of justice?_ ”

“I had a meeting with Mike Dunlap.”

“Oh yeah? Thinking about switching sides?” She tilts her head endearingly, “There’s always room on the good guys’ team.”

“So then what are you still doing here?”

“Ha ha.” She picks up her beer again and takes another sip. “You know you have quite a reputation, Echolls.”

He could say the same for her, but it’s likely nothing she doesn’t already know. “Good or bad?” he asks, though he has a fair guess.

Veronica shrugs. “Depends on who you ask. Carmen Ruiz says you’re decent. Angie Dahl _hates_ you.”

Logan laughs. “Yeah, I’ll bet she does.”

“She says you’re a show-boater.”

“I don’t know what that means, but I guess there’s no such thing as bad press?”

“Yeah, well, there’s also no higher praise than Angie Dahl’s disdain, so—take it for what it’s worth.”

“She’s just mad I got all her shitty evidence thrown out,” says Logan, to which Veronica smiles.

“How come you didn’t tell me who you were when we met last year?”

“I told you who I was.”

“I mean...”

“I know what you mean.” He shifts in his chair, leans back. “You mean why didn’t I tell you about my famous parents?”

She’s not embarrassed by his rephrasing. Only asks, “Well?”

“Didn’t seem relevant.”

Veronica smirks, doubtful. “You didn’t think it would help you get lucky?”

“Not if you’d ever heard of me. I fair slightly worse on the Google test than I do on the Angie Dahl test.”

She ignores or accepts the evasion, but either way seems undeterred. She shifts forward, elbows on the desk again and shoulders hunched over. “Can I ask you something that you might take offense at?”

“I’d be more surprised if you asked me something I _didn’t_ take offense at.”

“Why are you a public defender?”

It’s not exactly an unexpected question, nor an unusual one, so Logan’s response is pretty canned: “I gotta do something for a living.”

“No offense, but your net worth is on Google. You don’t ‘gotta’ do anything.”

“I bore easily.”                                                                         

“So you picked _law school_?”

Logan sighs. He called her ‘Detective’ last year, because she kept guessing at his backstory, but now he’s seeing the moniker might have been more accurate than anticipated. She refuses to let _anything_ go. He could banter and equivocate, but he doubts he’d avoid the topic for long.

“My mom wanted me to do something normal and respectable. Be a doctor or a lawyer or something, and I hated math, so...” He shrugs again.

Veronica nods. “How old were you when she died?” she asks gently.

Also not a surprising question. Logan can’t be sure how many details of his notorious lineage have seeped into the general knowledge of any given person he’s interacting with, but everyone remembers _that_ particular sordid story—the footage of his mom’s smashed up car on the turnpike ran for days on the 24 hours news cycle. Then for weeks afterward, you couldn’t check out at the grocery store without seeing the headlines— _Addicted to Painkillers, Intoxicated Behind the Wheel, Lynn Lester: Gone too Soon_ —

“Twenty.”

“I’m sorry.”

Logan drinks his beer rather than respond.

“So that explains the lawyer part,” Veronica begins again after a moment, “But why work at Legal Aid of all places?”

It’s not precisely a lie: “Because I was in law school about fifteen seconds before I remembered that I hated lawyers almost as much as I hated ninety percent of the people who hire lawyers.”

“Harsh.”

“There’s something honest about being court-appointed. Nobody expects you to pretend anything.”

“Okay, but how is that any different than any other defense attorney?” Veronica asks, a little heated. “You’re still getting up and bullshitting for someone who, let’s face it, probably did it, except that instead of bullshitting because someone cut you a big check, you’re doing it because your name came up and they stuck you with the file.”

“I never said it was different,” Logan points out. “Actually what I said was ‘I gotta do something for a living.’”

“But that’s so _cynical_...”

“Says the woman who just threw out the presumption of innocence.”

“I didn’t...” She breaks off and rolls her eyes, which is probably as close to an admission as she’s likely to get. “You can’t honestly expect me to believe that you took a crappy job, with crappy pay and a crappy office and a crappy caseload for cynical reasons—and that you _don’t_ want to run for office.”

“Hey, you’re the one who’s on a crusade, I’m just here for the glitz and glamor.” He experiences the gratification of making her crack a smile at that, but she covers it up with another pull from her Stella, then shakes her head with insincere irritation. Still, her persistence has him starting to think that this conversation isn’t truly about him at all. He peels at the label on his bottle and asks, “What, are _you_ thinking about switching sides or something?”

She locks eyes with him and positively glowers. “God, no.”

“No offense taken, by the way.”

“Being a prosecutor is basically why I _went_ to law school.”

“So then what’s the problem?”

“There’s no problem.”

“Really? Because you’re trying to convince one of us of _something_ , and I think if I was your target, I’d have been convinced by now.”

“God.” She rolls her eyes again. “You sound like Lilly Kane.”

Logan grins at the name drop. “Do you know Lilly Kane?”

“Uh-huh. Do _you_ know Lilly Kane?”

“Yeah. We used to date.”

“Of course you did.” Veronica shakes her head “I don’t know her _that_ well, but we had lunch together the other day. She was trying to recruit me.”

“She’s still at her dad’s firm, right? Kane, Landros?” Logan chuckles. If Veronica Mars can’t stand the thought of criminal defense attorneys, that’s exactly the wrong firm for her. “You’d have a _much_ bigger office...” he points out, and finds himself on the receiving end of another withering look.

“I’d rather chew glass.” (He’s not sure if that’s hyperbole.)

“So you’ve _always_ wanted to be a prosecutor?” he asks, instead of interrogating the matter.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“How come? Too much _L.A. Law?_ ”

“That, and the whole _locking up criminals, justice for victims_ angle.”

“How noble,” he says, with only the slightest dash of irony, so she doesn’t take offense.

“My dad’s a private investigator. Before that he was a cop,” she tells him. “My whole life I’ve watched him wear himself out putting criminals behind bars, only to have everything fall through when it got to the courts. Rich people got expensive lawyers and sympathetic juries, no matter how guilty they were, and everyone else suffered. My dad...” she catches herself in something then, but the save is _almost_ seamless, “pretty much lost his job because he couldn’t stand it.”

“So—what? You’re carrying on his legacy?”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m really not.”

She might not believe him, but she gives a terse nod and goes on, “I like the job. I like the work, and I mostly work with good people...”

“With a few Angie Dahls.”

“With a few Angie Dahls.”

“So...?” he asks. There’s something else there, he can sense it, some tension beneath the surface.

She hedges—another pull from her bottle and a little shrug—but she arrives at her point eventually. “Can I get your professional opinion?”

Logan snorts. He doubts very much there’s anything in his arsenal that Veronica Mars doesn’t already possess, but she’s welcome to whatever he’s got. “I should warn you,” he says, “I bill at like—eighty-three cents an hour, so: only if you can afford me.”

She doesn’t even dignify that with a response. “Did you follow the Rob Garvis case at all?”

“Name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Conviction,” she says. “Couple weeks ago. One of mine.”

“Okay. So?”

“I...” She twists her beer bottle around in her hand a couple of times, “I ended up with the case pretty late. Rogers left for—it doesn’t matter, but it wasn’t one I’d been working on from the start. I was kind of thrown into...” She stops, bites on her bottom lip, frustrated, like this is somehow not the point she’s trying to make.

“What’s the problem?” Logan asks, when she can’t seem to make up her mind. “You got the ‘win,’ right?”

Veronica takes a long beat. When she does respond, it’s with all her lawyerly caution: “I didn’t like the confession.”

 _Ah_.

“You didn’t like it.”

“I didn’t like it.”

That’s all she’ll say on the topic, lawyerly caution being what it is, but Logan catches her drift anyway. “But a judge liked it.”

“Judge Holton,” she answers his implicit question.

“Jury liked it?”

“Two hours in deliberation.”

“So...”

“So—I don’t know. _I don’t know._ I just—Garvis says he didn’t do it.”

“A lot of them say they didn’t do it.”

“I know.”

“Who was defense counsel?”

She tells him; Logan doesn’t know the particular attorney, but the firm’s pretty good. When he tells her as much, all she says is “ _I know”_ again, unappeased.

He realizes then that she doesn’t care about the legality of the thing, or whether protocol was followed. She doesn’t even care about the fairness. She’s not worried about an appeal or about a blemish on her record. The only thing she’s interested in is what actually happened, for its own sake.

The knowledge is as comforting as it is unexpected. He feels as though he’s discovered some well-guarded secret and is honored to be privy to the information. For all her apparent worldliness, this woman is, deep down, intensely honest. He’d thought—maybe _assumed_ that she was jaded, but she’s not. Not at all. The opposite, really

Maybe that’s why she was so quick to believe that he was a liar, last time they met. She was compensating for something.

So, in spite of the fact that she’s almost a stranger, Logan can’t help himself. He asks, “You know Clarence Weidman at all?”

Veronica glances up from her half empty beer. “No, should I?”

“Probably. He’s a useful guy to know.” Logan reaches into his coat pocket and takes out his wallet. He locates one of his cards, then his cell phone, and, leaning forward, plucks a pen from the cup on Veronica’s desk. “He’s an investigator, and he only takes referrals, so you’ll want to tell him I gave you his number.” He locates said number in his Contacts, then scribbles it on the back of his own business card. “If there’s something wrong with your case, he’ll find it.”

He picks up the card, and Veronica takes it from between two fingers, turning it over thoughtfully, almost suspiciously, for a moment. “Give him a call after the holiday,” says Logan, “And don’t worry about his rate. I’ll let him know I’m cashing in one my many favors.”

Veronica’s eyes flicker up to him, _definitely_ suspicious now. “Why would you help me?” she asks. “You don’t even know me.”

_Because he’s a sucker for a blonde in distress? Because she seems so earnestly worth it?_

“Spirit of Christmas?”

He finishes the last swallow of beer and places the empty bottle on her desk. “Use the number. Weidman’s good.”

Veronica stares at the cardstock a moment longer, though it’s turned to the side with Logan’s information, as though she’s trying to gauge his trustworthiness from his fax line. Eventually, she sets the card down on her desk, and with a clipped nod, says, “Thank you.”

“Sure.” He checks his watch. “And I should probably get going...”

“I should get back to work,” Veronica agrees, rising with him. “I swore I’d be home at a reasonable hour, but that’s looking less and less likely.” She frowns down at her file folders, and Logan buttons up his coat.

“Your boyfriend a lawyer, too?”

“No, he works for the F.B.I.”

That triggers something, a memory of the last time they spoke. “The same one from before?”

“The same F.B.I., yes.” She smirks at his scowl.

“You know what I meant.”

“Yeah, it’s the same guy. We got back together—almost ten months ago, now.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks. What about you? You dating a lawyer?”

“Nah. She’s a singer.”

“A singer?” Veronica follows him to the door. “Like a _real_ singer, or an aspiring singer slash youtube personality?”

“Wow, so judgmental.” Logan grins and shakes his head. He’d have only to say it’s Grammy-nominated, Can’t-Turn-on-the-Radio-Without-Hearing-that-Damn-Song Bonnie de Ville, but he’d really rather not get into all that just now. “A real singer.”

“Well, congratulations to you, too. I guess it’s a good thing you and I didn’t work out, hmm?”

“Easy there.” He opens the door but turns back to face her. “Don’t let yourself off the hook _that_ quickly.”

“I was _fated_ to jump to conclusions and throw cheap champagne in your face, Echolls,” she goes on, very earnest. “I really can’t be blamed.”

 He extends his hand and she shakes it.

“I’m glad I ran into you,” she says, meeting his eye. “I don’t think that I would’ve had the guts, otherwise. Truthfully, I’ve been terrified you’d get assigned to one of my cases, and I’d have had to have this conversation with my _boss_.” She drops his hand and folds her arms.

“God, me too,” says Logan. “Every time I’ve come down here, I’ve been afraid I’d run into you. Lurking in the shadows, just waiting to attack...”

“Oh shut up,” she laughs, and Logan steps out into the drafty foyer.

“It was nice to meet you again,” he says.

“You too.” She leans against the doorframe. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

He takes a few steps towards the elevator before she calls, “Echolls,” and he pauses. She hesitates, considering her words, then eventually decides on, “Don’t be a stranger.”

Logan nods.

She disappears behind her office door, and he hits the button for the elevator.


	3. Rescue Me (December 31st, 2016)

 

2016

 

 

Veronica smooths her hands down the front of her dress—tasteful black Chanel—checking for wrinkles in light of her recently removed apron, but the material lies smooth.

Despite her best efforts to find _some_ flaw in her arrangement, everything is perfect:

Hair in a loose, classy chignon: check. Rose colored lipstick: check. Pearl earrings, gold chain necklace, French tipped manicure: check, check, check.

Unshakeable nerves? Check.

She turns the kitchen stereo down a few notches in an attempt to eavesdrop on the conversation in the living room, and she reads the tone, even if she can’t quite register the substance. Things seem cordial enough: her dad’s never been Seth’s number one fan (something about her being nineteen and his being twenty-four when they first met, back during her college F.B.I. internship), but Keith’s definitely exerting the effort this trip, and Seth is on his best behavior.

The timer buzzes on the stove, and Veronica switches off the front burner, then turns to inspect the rest of the menu laid out on the counter: an assortment of cheeses and olives, stuffed mushrooms, bruschetta and crostini, cornbread bites, and bacon-wrapped asparagus. There are three cases of beer chilling in the refrigerator; half a dozen bottles of red wine on the kitchen table; Hendricks, Glenlivet, and Grey Goose on the drink cart. Champagne is chilled, plates and napkins are stacked out in the main living area, and the apartment is spotless. Everything’s ready now; it’s ten minutes to eight, and people will start arriving soon.

And _still_ Veronica’s teeth are on edge.

What was she thinking, throwing this stupid party? _Now_ of all times?

What she was thinking, of course, was that she wanted to show her dad a good time while he’s in New York for the holidays. She wanted to show him that she’s happy at her new job—corporate and sellout as it is. She wanted him to see her— _their_ —new apartment, and she wanted him to meet her friends and approve of them, and Seth, and her coworkers, and…

...And okay, she’s starting to see that she may have set the bar a little high for a simple New Years’ Eve party.

“Hey, V?” calls Seth, already pushing through the swinging door that leads out to the living room, shouting like he doesn’t know she’s there, “Where are the...? Oh, hi.” He adjusts his volume appropriately: “Where are the Double-A batteries?”

“In the drawer.” She points, and Seth goes to retrieve them. He looks nice in his argyle pullover and navy blue button up, fair hair combed over to the side.

(Okay, he looks like a Cool Dad in a Macy’s commercial, but it’s not a _bad_ look.)

He starts to change out the batteries in the remote control, while Veronica grabs a serving bowl from the cabinet. “You’re gonna watch T.V.?” she asks, and hates how the question makes her sound like the kind of nagging girlfriend guys complain about. “People are going to be here any minute.”

“I was gonna put on Dick Clark,” says Seth, clicking the back of the remote into place.

Veronica softens the criticism with some light teasing. “You mean Ryan Seacrest?”

“I’m not calling it that,” Seth says flatly. “It’ll _always_ be Dick Clark.” He notices her dishing up the food and leans over to investigate. “I thought you were gonna make the thing with the shrimp?”

“People are allergic. I made meatballs. Wanna try?” She spears one with a fork and holds it up for Seth.

“What do you mean ‘people are allergic?’ What people?”

“I don’t know, just people. A lot of people.”

“So people who are allergic won’t eat it; I don’t see the problem.” He takes the fork and pops the meatball in his mouth, nonetheless.

“Well, I made this instead,” says Veronica, patience slipping, “so if you want to go to the store and buy _shrimp,_ you are more than welcome...”

Seth, still chewing the hotly contested meatball, holds his hands—and the remote—up in surrender, and says, “You’re the boss” over a mouthful. He backs out through the doorway to rejoin her father in the other room, and Veronica decides that now is not the time to pick a fight.

_She’s just gotta get through the night._

 

 

Seth’s partner Carter and Carter’s wife are the first to arrive, and for a few minutes, there’s an awkward lull, while the five of them stand around and try to chit-chat. Then the rest of the party begins to arrive, and there’s a steady trickle over the next half hour.

A handful of Veronica’s co-workers from Truman Mann show up: Luke, Marlena, Nick, and Hannah—the ones Veronica pretty much mostly likes—with their dates. Hannah’s a paralegal, Luke and Marlena are fellow attorneys, and Nick is technically her boss. Josh and Carmen from the D.A.’s office also arrive, and, once they’ve mixed in the rest of Seth’s F.B.I. friends with Seth’s Upper Eastside private school friends, the whole party makes for an interesting ( _interesting? Sure, let’s go with “interesting”_ ) group of people. The room starts to fill up, grows noisier and warmer, and Veronica switches the music from Motown to Vince Guaraldi so that the conversations aren’t drowned out.

The key is to get everyone all introduced to each other early on, so they don’t segregate.

“Sweetheart, you _can_ sit and enjoy your own party, you know,” says her dad, when he finds her dividing her attention between the clock on the wall and the status of her guests’ wine glasses.

“I will,” she assures him. “Once everyone gets here.”

Keith Mars is sipping scotch on ice, and he seems to be having a good time. Somehow, in his green sweater and slacks, he _still_ manages to look less like he’s trying to sell a department store grill than her boyfriend does, but—that’s neither here nor there.

He arrived Christmas Eve and flies back on Monday, and even though it’s always tough to see him go, it’s harder than usual this year. Veronica misses him so much, her only real family, and 2016 has been such a long year—leaving her job at the D.A.’s office for the corporate litigation gig at Truman Mann, the torturous apartment hunt, finally moving into this place, then—well, everything else. She won’t admit it, but Veronica _really_ needed this visit.

“Everything looks great, honey,” her dad says, taking her hand, and beaming. “You look beautiful, the apartment is great...”

“Isn’t it?” she cuts him off. _That corporate sellout money sure does clean up._ It’s a lovely two-bedroom in the Village—very modern, exposed brick and big windows, a state-of-the-art kitchen, and enough space for all her guests. “It beats that hole in the wall I used to live in,” she says, recalling the drafty, overpriced railroad flat she lived in when she first moved to New York. “Remember? Parker had to duck walking through the doorways.”

“Speaking of Parker,” asks Keith, “is the inimitable Miss Lee joining us tonight?”

“Uh-huh, should be here any minute. We’re still waiting on a few people.” Veronica checks the clock again. “What about you, have you met everyone? Oh, you know who you should talk to is Josh Diaz—did you met him yet?”

“I don’t think...”

“Look, he’s right there... _Josh_.” Veronica makes the introduction, certain that Josh’s war stories from two decades as a prosecutor will align with her father’s interests almost as much as her dad’s P.I. anecdotes will capture Josh’s imagination. Just as she’s finished setting that in motion, the front doorbell beckons her away.

After half a dozen _excuse me’s_ and several sets of toes miraculously spared Veronica’s high heels, she reaches the foyer, and on the other side of the door, she’s met by Parker, Jackie, Wallace, Logan, and a poorly synchronized chorus of _Happy New Year!_

“Sorry we’re late!” gushes Parker, swallowing her up in a hug, while the other three pile inside. “We pre-gamed at Jackie and Wallace’s. Oh my God, little Hank is _so_ cute, he calls me _Miss Lee,_ it’s so freaking adorable.” She pulls off her coat to reveal a magenta sheath dress and adds, “Also... full disclosure: we’re already a little tipsy.”

Veronica takes the coat from her, gesturing for the others to hand over their outerwear as well.

“ _Lee_ is a little tipsy,” corrects Jackie, stunning as ever in gold and black. “The rest of us paced ourselves, so that we’re not asleep by ten o’clock.”

“I can’t believe you pre-gamed without me,” says Veronica, only half joking. “For my own party!”

“Next time we’ll pre-game here, but you didn’t miss much,” says Wallace, handing over his coat. “Hey, V, how are you?”

“So far so good,” she replies, accepts his one-armed hug with a smile.

In an amusing twist, Veronica actually does like Jackie Cook’s _real_ husband immensely. Wallace Fennel is down to earth and good-natured, not exactly what she was expecting, being as she is acquainted with his wife and his best friend, who are, it can’t be denied, on the flashier side. He’s a high school physics teacher and basketball coach in Queens, which makes him kind of a rarity tonight: one of the only people in the room who has no connection to the law.

Then there’s Logan, last to enter, as he tugs a scarf from his neck, then starts on the buttons of his coat.

“ _You_ ,” Veronica accuses, taking the scarf. “It’s your fault. You stole my friends.”

“I think technically you stole mine,” Logan corrects, accepts the kiss on his cheek that Veronica stands on her toes to give. He looks perfect, of course, as Logan Echolls almost always does, in snug-fitted black, with charcoal grey slacks. Smells of snow and good cologne. “Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Year.”

“Oh my God, I completely forgot!” Parker interjects, “Let me see it!” Before Veronica can react, however, Parker snatches her left hand, nearly upsetting all the coats, and begins to ogle the newest piece of jewelry taking up real estate on Veronica’s third finger. “Oh,” Parker coos, “It’s...” she pauses and frowns, and Jackie swats her arm.

“ _Lee_.”

“No, I mean it’s beautiful of course,” says Parker quickly, lifting the hand and accompanying engagement ring for all to see. “It’s just...” she holds it closer to her face. “It’s just such a—ring. You know?”

“Literally _no one_ has any idea what you’re talking about,” says Jackie. “Veronica, it’s beautiful. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“Congrats, V.”

“Thanks, Wallace.”

“Veronica knows I’m very, very happy for her and very, very jealous,” says Parker, with a quick wink at her friend. “Which reminds me, Echolls, Cook—when’re you gonna introduce me to your hot geek friend?”

“Maybe when you stop referring to her as our ‘hot geek friend?’” suggests Jackie.

“I have no objection,” says Logan.

“That’s why I like you best,” says Parker.

“Well, I’m glad you guys made it, in whatever state of intoxication you may be,” says Veronica, “But before you go out and talk to anyone, I need you to remind me of the number one rule for the night.”

In bored, sing-song unison: “Don’t talk about the election.”

“Yes,” says Veronica. “Thank you. The first person to mention white rural Pennsylvania voters, I swear to God…”

“As if we would want to,” says Parker indignantly. “Now. Most importantly: is Keith here?”

“Uh, yep, he’s around here somewhere.”

“I’m going to go find him. You guys gotta meet Keith, he’s a sweetheart,” she adds to the others, then promptly disappears into the masses.

“Husband,” says Jackie, turning to Wallace and planting one hand on each of his shoulders, “Let’s find me some gin, shall we?”

“Bar’s that-a-way,” says Veronica, pointing, and Jackie and Wallace follow her directions. Veronica turns to Logan, extends her hand to collect his coat.

“I’ll take it,” he says, “Just tell me where.”

She’s got her own pile of coats, though, so she just says, “This way,” and leads him toward the bedroom.

She lays out Jackie’s and Parker’s and Wallace’s respective wrappings on the bed with all the others, but Logan goes and hangs his on the hook on the door. Just to be a dick, she thinks, because he turns and grins at her as he does it, just _waiting_ for her to roll her eyes at him.

“Come on, Moneybags,” she says, slouching over and pushing him out. “You gotta go entertain the Truman Mann crew. God knows I can’t.”

Logan allows her to prod and poke him out and down the hallway, “What’s the _theme_ of this party, anyway?” he snarks as they go. “ _Law & Order_?”

“The theme is No Wisecracks from Logan Echolls.”

He ignores this. “ _In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups_ : Seth’s friends, and Veronica’s friends.”

“ _Shhh_ ,” she hushes him, because they’re just about to the living room, and she requires that he behave. She pokes him one last time in the shoulder and says, “Now go out there and make me look good, okay?”

“I’m beginning to think that’s the only reason you invite me to things.”

“Good. You’re catching on.”

 

As the night wears on, Veronica’s stress alleviates marginally. Not drastically, but she adjusts to the circumstances.

She wishes she could outlaw the topic of the ring on her finger as effectively as she’s banned the electoral-college-popular-vote debate, but it’s a no-go. Most of her initial interactions with everyone involve _congratulations_ and _have you set a date_ and _oh what a beautiful diamond_ , and the whole thing is such a drag.

Worst of all is when they want to know _how_ Seth proposed.

The story itself starts out nice enough: corner booth of a fancy restaurant, red wine and tiramisu, the week before Christmas.

The fairytale is all fine and well, until you get to Veronica’s portion of the narrative, which she judiciously leaves out of the retelling.

Seth asked her to marry him... and she asked him for time to think about it.

Not exactly the stuff romance is made of, and she knows Seth wasn’t pleased with the response. But, what, he just expected her to have an answer on the spot? To know right away if he was the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with?

It’s unrealistic. Unreasonable. Unfair.

Also kind of unromantic, as far as Seth’s concerned.

But he gave her the time, and, as promised, she gave it thought. Consulted with friends. Figured it out. Accepted, and she’s got the ring to prove it, so: the end. Happy New Year.

Now can everyone please stop talking about it?

 

 

At about twenty minutes to midnight, Veronica ducks out of a bland but inoffensive conversation with Hannah the Paralegal in order to pour champagne for the countdown.

The kitchen appears empty at first, so Veronica actively startles when she catches movement—in the form of a quivering refrigerator door—out of the corner of her eye.

“Jesus,” she whispers reflexively, and then Logan’s head pops up over the door, and she relaxes. “ _God._ You startled me. What are you doing in here?”

He straightens up all the way, waggles a beer bottle demonstratively, and closes the fridge.

“There’s beer out there,” Veronica points out.

“It’s not cold anymore.”

“Diva.”

“I never denied it.”

Veronica shakes her head and goes to open the refrigerator door he just closed, retrieving four bottles of champagne, which she carries over to the counter by the sink. The champagne glasses are already laid out on two serving trays, a product of the careful engineering behind the whole evening.

Logan follows her to the other side of the kitchen, and when he reaches the counter, he starts rummaging round for—something. He opens drawers and scans the countertops, and Veronica watches, peeling foil off the top of the bottle, until he locates the object of his search—a bottle opener—and employs it on the amber ale.

“At least you didn’t use the countertop,” says Veronica, and she’s focused on removing the cork, but she can hear the grin in his response:

“Manners cost nothing, Mars.”

She senses him watching her as she pops the cork on the first bottle of champagne, and she’s on the verge of making a quip—something like, “don’t just sit there, make yourself useful”—when he speaks up instead:

“So you said ‘yes,’ huh?”

Automatically, Veronica glances at the ring on her left hand as she begins filling glasses. There can be no doubt what he’s referencing. “Well,” she begins, cautious, “you gave good advice.”

“I did? Doesn’t sound like me.”

“At lunch the other day. What you said about how I shouldn’t let my parents’ shitty marriage dictate my future.”

“That _definitely_ doesn’t sound like me.”

“I’m paraphrasing.”

Logan sets down his beer and picks up one of the other champagne bottles, examining the label as he twists the muselet. For a moment, Veronica’s reminded of the first time they met, of “ _As irresistible as I find twelve-dollar champagne_...” and billiards and bad karaoke. The memory of that night feels so distant, so foreign, much longer than just two years ago.

When she adopted Logan to be her friend, it had been—a little bit of a fluke, to be honest, Veronica doesn’t know what inspired her. He helped her out with the Garvis case, and his office was just a couple of blocks away when she worked for the D.A., so they’d started getting lunch every once in a while. By the time she took the job at Truman Mann in April—further away from Legal Aid, but still within reason—their lunches were a weekly ritual, and it would have felt stranger to quit them than to accommodate the distance. They’d built up this little circle around them, too, with Parker, Jackie, and Wallace. Carrie, too, when she and Logan were still together. And Seth, to some degree, although there’s no question that the group belongs to Veronica.

She doesn’t think Seth particularly likes Logan, though he hasn’t explicitly stated it.

Ostensibly, they’re very similar. A lot of their stats line up. White guys with money who got tangled up with the law, one way or the other. They’re both smart and charming, handsome, successful in their own rights, but the similarities don’t hold up beyond superficial scrutiny.

Seth’s a WASP, conventionally ambitious, worships the ground his bureaucrat father walks upon, and embodies the essence of respectability. Logan is a Hollywood refugee who could give a damn about his bad reputation and is, at the end of the day, kind of a mess.

A sweet, wonderful mess, whom Veronica adores (as a friend), but a mess nonetheless.

In fact, that could be why she likes him so much (as a friend): because he understands the complicated, shitty aspects of life, the shades of grey.

And when he doesn’t understand, he realizes that too. He’s the only one who seems to get why she had to leave the D.A.’s office, and he didn’t ever appear to judge her for it. That’s not to say he hasn’t made his share of “corporate shill” jokes, but she doesn’t feel as though he looks at her any differently now that she’s employed—what’s Gale’s phrase?— _making frivolous lawsuits disappear_.

And Veronica would know, because Logan looks at her with a very specific—fondness.

Friendly fondness.

That makes her feel very... well-friended...

He’s been supportive, since she told him Seth proposed.

He starts pouring the champagne into empty glasses, and Veronica falls out of her reverie.

“Well, I thought it was good advice, anyway,” she mumbles.

“I’m glad,” says Logan. “I just... I didn’t mean you should feel like...” He wavers. “I just meant you should do what you want. If you want to marry Seth, then that’s what you should do.”

“I know what you meant.” She pinches the stem of a crooked glass between two fingers, shifts it so the cup falls in line with the others. “Of course I’d want to marry Seth. He’s—Seth. Everyone knows he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Logan’s hand falters. He opens his mouth like he wants to argue, but then thinks better and resumes pouring. “Um—okay, I guess. I mean I got you _Hamilton_ tickets for your birthday, but...”

Veronica chuckles. “Yeah, and they were very nice tickets, but... honestly, it felt kind of _braggy.”_

“Braggy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“ _Braggy_?”

“As if you didn’t know.”

“Alright, cool, you’re getting a Starbucks gift card next year.”

They’ve filled up all the glasses on the first tray and emptied two bottles, but, rather than take it out to the other guests, Veronica picks up the third bottle of champagne with a mind to fill up the next tray. Might as well; they’re not in any rush, it’s only eleven-forty-three.

“So you met my Dad, huh?” she asks, once the cork is popped.

“Yeah.” Logan smiles. He shifts and leans with his back to the counter, arms folded over his chest. “He’s—cool.”

“Yeah?”

“Not what I expected.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know, the way you described him... ex-cop, taught you all the trade secrets, I was kind of expecting someone gruff and—prickly. But he’s... a lot like you, actually.”

“You sayin’ I’m not prickly?”

“I’m saying you don’t look it.”

“That’s how we get ya.”

“Believe me, I know.”

“So you’re saying I _am_ prickly.”

Logan raises his eyebrows, _Can there be any doubt?,_ and Veronica laughs. She’s nearly emptied the third bottle, half-filled the second tray of glasses, and Logan sets to work opening the fourth.

“So have you heard from Carrie at all?” she asks, keeping her tone as innocent as possible.

“She called on Christmas.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm.”

 “So—did you guys talk?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think...?”

“We were just catching up.”

Veronica hears that with a certain amount of relief. It’s not that she _dislikes_ Logan’s ex. On the contrary, Carrie Bishop is smart, funny, and charismatic—far more than the superficial socialite Veronica half expected when she learned that Logan was dating _Bonnie Freakin’ de Ville_.

She just wasn’t quite right for _Logan_.

He needs someone more...

More something. Veronica can’t locate the correct characteristic.

“How is she?”

“Okay. Kicking off the European tour soon.”

“That’s cool.”

“Yeah. Here...” The last drops of the sparkling wine trickle into a still half-empty glass, and Logan takes the empty from her, replaces it with the full bottle.

“Thanks.”

“Uh-huh. So...” he picks up one of the bent up muselets and begins to toy with it, twisting the straightened wire back into a little ring. “When’s the big day?”

 _Why does everyone insist on talking about the stupid wedding?_ She’d thought at _least_ Logan would spare her. He’s usually better at reading her moods.

“I don’t know, not for a while,” she says. “I’m told these things take a while to plan even when you’re not working ninety hour weeks. If it were up to me, I’d just go to the courthouse, but...”

 “But?”

“I think I missed the boat on that one,” she confesses. “Seth wants something at his family’s place in Connecticut, and I don’t have too many chips left to bargain after I needed ‘time to think about it.’”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Then you are wrong.” She finishes with the second tray of glasses. “But it’s okay. A wedding could be fun.” She looks over at Logan. “You’ll come, right?”

“Can’t. I’m barred from entering the state of Connecticut.”

“We’ll sneak you in. A little illegal smuggling should make things interesting.”

“Well, that’s what I’m here for.” The joke falls flat for some reason, but it’s about eleven-forty-five now, and Veronica really has to distribute the champagne. She picks up the tray, and Logan moves ahead to get the door for her.

“I probably should’ve just poured these out there, huh,” grumbles Veronica, traveling very slowly across the kitchen.

“You could always move the guests in _here_ ,” offers Logan, ever unhelpful. Veronica can’t properly glare at him, however, because her attention is focused on avoiding catastrophe. Consequently, when she’s halfway across the room and Logan speaks again, she’s a little confused. “That’s weird.”

“Hmmm?”

“Trina’s calling me.”

She glances up. Logan’s still propping open the door, but with his other hand, he’s holding up his cell and staring at the screen like someone’s changed the language settings to Japanese.

“Your sister?”

“Uh-huh.”

Veronica doesn’t see what’s so strange about that. “She’s probably wishing you happy new year.”

“She’s in California.”

“So she’s wishing you happy new year in your own time zone.”

“With every word you speak, it becomes increasingly obvious that you’ve never met my sister,” says Logan. He answers his phone, but beyond a “Hello?” Veronica doesn’t hear any of the conversation. She passes him into the main room, and the closed door and din of the party swallow up his voice.

By the time she’s dropped off the first tray and returned to the kitchen for the second, Logan seems to be embroiled in some kind of debate over the phone. He’s pacing the far side of the kitchen near the exit to the hallway, head bent as he says, “This isn’t just something you _read_ about _,_ right?”

Veronica burns with curiosity as she collects the rest of the champagne, but the most she catches eavesdropping is, “He told you? He’s—no, I _don’t_ want to talk to him...” before she’s out in the party again.

She deposits the second tray besides its companion, collects a few empty serving dishes, and then casts around for her fiancée, who’s chatting with her dad and a couple of his F.B.I buddies.

“Seth, can you tell everyone the champagne’s out?” she asks, carefully stacking the emptied dishes for the trip back to the kitchen.

“Sure. You don’t think it’ll go flat before midnight?”

Veronica doesn’t know one way or the other, but she doesn’t let a trifling thing like ignorance hinder her confidence. “Nope.”

(She notices her dad hide a smile, so maybe _he_ reads her bluff anyway.)

“Alright, you’re the boss,” says Seth, and one of his coworkers—Bill? Brad, maybe?—chuckles.

“You better get used to saying that,” Brett-or-possibly-Brendan says. “That’s marriage summed up in three words.” Somehow, Veronica doesn’t get the impression that he’s referring to a spirit of compromise and understanding of another person’s view point, but now’s probably not the time to get into all that.

Instead, she sucks it up and turns to go, but she’s scarcely made it three steps before Seth calls back to her. “Hey wait a minute.” He reaches out for her hand and, when she gives it, he draws her close. “Hey, everyone,” he says louder, then repeats it two or three more times until he has the general attention. _Seth and his speeches._ Veronica feels her face flush: _at least it’s dim in here_. “Hey, I know it’s almost midnight,” he says, “but I thought I’d get a head-start on the toasts here.” He smiles at Veronica. “As you all already know, Veronica has _finally_ put me out of my misery and agreed to marry me.”

There’s general applause. Veronica observes Parker standing near the television, taking a premature sip of her cocktail, possibly because she’s aware that Seth’s phrasing might be a little more literal than everyone else assumes.

“I’ve known Veronica for about nine years now, and it hasn’t always been a smooth ride, but there isn’t anyone I’d rather spend the rest of my life with...” The expected _aws_ follow, though Veronica doesn’t look to see from whom. Instead, she smiles as wide as she can at a knot in the hardwood floor that looks like a button. “Veronica is the most beautiful woman in the world, and I am so lucky that I talked her into marrying me—” _There it is again... that phrasing_ can’t _just be a coincidence._ “I can’t wait to start the new year with her.” He lifts his glass. “Happy new year, Veronica,” he glances at her, then turns to the party at large, “And, everyone else—thank you for spending your new year with us.”

There’s a blend of _hear-hears_ and _happy new years_ , and Seth presses a quick kiss to her lips. When he pulls away again, he says, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Anything you want to add, Sweetheart?”

Veronica is not really one for speeches, though, and the best she can do is: “There’s... champagne on the table over here if anyone wants it...”

 

Eventually, she does manage to escape the onslaught of questions about rings and dates and color schemes, all pertaining to a wedding that no one has begun to plan, and she lugs the serving dishes back to the kitchen.

Logan’s lingering there by the kitchen table when she sets the dishes in the sink. It’s a bit surprising, to be honest. His antisocial habits tend to be subtler. He’s off the phone, though he’s still staring at the screen in the palm of his hand with such intense concentration that Veronica does a double take just to figure out what he’s up to.

He doesn’t react to her at all, though, not her entrance nor her staring, and she realizes it’s not just concentration lining his face. Something’s wrong, she feels it in her gut.

She takes a step closer. “Logan? Is everything okay?”

He still doesn’t look up. His voice is low and flat when he replies, “Aaron’s getting married.”

“Aaron? Your dad?”

By way of response, he says. “To Jessica Price.”

Jessica Price. The name rattles around in Veronica’s head for a moment, before she locates it. “The actress?”

Immediately, she realizes that’s an idiotic question. _Of course, the actress_. Jessica Price is this year’s _It Girl_ , and while Veronica hadn’t been aware that she was dating Logan’s father, it certainly comes as no surprise. They were in that movie together last summer—one of those flicks where the manic-pixie-dream-blonde melts the heart of a brooding divorcee. The two and a half decade age difference is a bit extreme, if par for the course in Hollywood, but Veronica can see that the news is upsetting Logan. He sets his phone down on the table and runs a hand through his hair, and Veronica doesn’t know what to say, just that she has to say _something_. “When are they getting married?”

Logan ignores the question, or maybe doesn’t hear it. “She’s pregnant,” he says.

“She’s—Jessica Price is pregnant?”

He nods. He finally looks up, meets her eye, and the look there is—it’s shattering. “He’s having another kid,” he says, voice hollow, and Veronica doesn’t have a clue what’s going on, but Logan’s face has gone ashen, eyes are wide and vacant, and it twists her stomach into knots.

“Logan, are you okay?” she asks, taking another step forward.

“He _can’t_ ,” says Logan, emphatic, as if Veronica is supposed to know this already. “He can’t do this. She doesn’t—she doesn’t know what he’s really like, or she wouldn’t…” He breaks off, shakes his head and swallows thickly, and it becomes apparent that, whatever’s going on, Logan is decidedly _not_ okay.

“You should sit down,” Veronica tells him, then marches over to the sink and pours a glass of water.

Logan doesn’t sit. He takes the water, doesn’t drink, and places it on the table with a directness that seems automatic, involuntary even. He’s distracted; his eyes dart around the kitchen floor, and it’s like standing in the room with a stranger. Veronica is starting to become genuinely frightened. “Can you tell me what’s going on?” she asks.

“He can’t do this,” is all Logan says, beginning to pace. “He can’t have another kid.” He looks up at her, eyes rounded in fear, and her heart breaks for him. “He’s—you don’t know what he’s like. He’s... he’s...”

But Logan won’t say it.

He can’t, like it’s something he’s held inside for too long, he doesn’t know how to form words around it, but Veronica can guess.

“Logan...”

He lets out a shaky breath and says, “I—I gotta go.”

“Go... go where?”

He pushes through the far kitchen door, the one that leads out into the hall, and his strides are long and brisk, so Veronica doesn’t catch up with him until he’s back in the bedroom gathering his coat.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t—home. L.A. I guess.” He finds gloves in his pockets and is pulling them on as he stomps back into the hallway.

“L.A.?”

They barely have to cross the main room to reach the front door, and it doesn’t much matter, as the rest of the party is gathered along the far end—around the T.V. and the ball drop most likely, but at least Veronica’s spared the awkwardness of having to explain anything. Especially fortunate, because she has no clear idea as to what it is that she would be trying to explain.

“Will you slow down for a minute?” Veronica asks, following Logan to the end of the hallway. Her brain is still trying to sort out all the new information, little things—incidents, things she’s noticed about Logan’s habits, how he communicates and relates—are clicking into place, so she doesn’t even know what she’d say if Logan _did_ slow down.

He gets to the elevators and smashes the button with his thumb, rubs his forehead with the palm of one gloved hand.

“It’s not like you can fly to California _tonight_ ,” she points out, catching up to him.

He hits the button again. “I can’t just—you don’t understand.” He turns on her, the side of his hand cutting a line over his chest, “This is my fault.” Veronica doesn’t even know what “this” is, and she’s positive that’s not true. She starts to tell him that, but he speaks over her, repeats, “It’s my fault. I should’ve—I never told people. About him.”

“Logan, no...”

“It’s my fault,” he repeats, then repeats it again.

“It’s _not_ ,” she insists, ducks so he has to meet her eye. “Whatever’s going on, this isn’t your fault.”

“I...” He swallows again, looks as though he’s trying to say something but can’t manage. “I—I’m...”

As long as she’s known him, Veronica’s never seen Logan stammer over anything.

He closes his eyes, his lip shakes, and he keeps swallowing, almost like he’s choking. Then he can’t even rasp out the single syllables, and Veronica understands—he’s not choking, but he can’t breathe. He’s panicking.

“Logan,” she says when she realizes, “ _Logan_ , you have to breathe.” He shakes his head in protest, but she places her hand on his cheek, forces him to look her in the eye again. “You have to breathe, okay? You’re okay. Everything’s okay...” He shakes his head more fervently, “...But you have to breathe. Like—like this, okay…” She models once— _one, two, three, four._ The second time she places his gloved hand on her chest, then breathes again, _one, two, three, four_ , in and out, again _one two three four,_ and then he’s breathing with her.

One two three four one two three four...

Long, heavy moments drag by. A minute, maybe two.

Veronica doesn’t release his hand, but eventually Logan draws it back.

He’s breathing evenly again, by that time, on his own.

He looks so _young_ , somehow, younger than Veronica ever knew him. The lines of his face have faded, his lower lips trembles, but at least he’s breathing. He’s soft and sad, and Veronica’s never been very good at handling either of those things, but she finds herself wishing she were.

There’s a heavy _bang_ , faint and distant, followed by several more.

Fireworks. Then the sound of music and applause drifts out from one of her neighbor’s apartments, and Veronica remembers everything else—the party, the countdown, the new year.

“I’m okay,” says Logan. The din from the neighbors’ apartments—or maybe from Veronica’s, it’s hard to tell—grows louder. She pulls away a little, just enough for decency, and Logan drops his gaze. Repeats, “I’m okay.”

She nods along with him. “Come back inside? You don’t have to deal with people, you can just lie down...”

He shakes his head. “I gotta go,” he says again, less urgent than before, but with all the determination.

“Go _where_?” Veronica folds her arms, glares over his shoulder at the elevator, as though it’s to blame for her friend’s obstinacy. “You’re just going to fly across the country. Just like that? It’s the middle of the night.”

These aren’t her best arguments, because she doesn’t have a clear idea of what she thinks Logan _should_ do, except stay, because he shouldn’t be alone right now. She knows that much.

“I don’t know,” says Logan, shuffling. “I can’t stay here though.”

She tries not to take that personally.

The elevator has long since come and gone, so he presses the button again. “I’m sorry you missed the...” he gestures. As if she cares about that. “You should go back. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter...”

“It _does_. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t...” Then the elevator arrives, and Veronica _can’t_ let him leave, not like this.

“Wait—just—at least let me go get Wallace.” He hesitates at that, she can tell. “Just wait here,” she says, taking a step back toward her apartment. Already the first escapees from one of the other parties are trickling out into the hallway, and Veronica’s sure Logan would slip out while she’s gone, if he had his way. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go.”

He nods, mouths _alright_ , and Veronica hurries back to her apartment.

Unfortunately, her entrance doesn’t go unnoticed. Almost the moment she’s inside, she’s confronted with Seth, stalking down the hall, visibly upset. “There you are—where’d you go? You missed midnight.”

“It’s a long story,” Veronica says. Nobody else seems to have detected her absence; the party carries on, with everyone still exchanging toasts. “I need to find Wallace. Do you know—?”

Her dad finds them before she can finish the question. He gives her a smiling kiss on the cheek, and that’s all well and good, but she really has to locate Wallace and Jackie before Logan runs off, and it’s kind of hard in the crowded, dark apartment—

“V, what’s going on?” Seth wants to know, and she feels faintly guilty. She notices, as she deflects with assurances that she’ll explain in a minute, that Carly Simon is playing on the stereo: the final strains of _Nobody Does it Better_ , rather than the more traditional _Auld Lang Syne_. Seth must’ve put it on for her; he says it’s their song—“ _the spy who loved me”_ line applies, apparently—and her guilt amps up. He’ll understand when she figures out how to explain this.

She finds Wallace and Jackie over by the bar, still embraced and beaming at one another, and Veronica’s sorry to interrupt, though she does anyway.

They react with probably more understanding than Veronica possesses, though. Jackie immediately tells her husband to go find Logan while she fetches their coats. They’re gone without much more than the most cursory goodbye, and it’s only then that Veronica realizes that Seth and her father have followed her across the party.

“What’s going on?” Seth asks again, as Parker joins them, having noticed her friends’ abrupt departure.

“Veronica, what’s going on?”

The music and the crowd and _everything_ are getting to be overwhelming, though. Veronica shakes her head, gathers her wits. “There was a family emergency,” she says, loud enough to be heard but not overheard. “It’s fine, they’re—”

“Oh my god, is the baby okay?” gasps Parker, because she thinks Veronica’s talking about Wallace and Jackie.

“The baby’s fine, everything’s fine,” Veronica assures them. “It’s taken care of.”

“You’re sure?” asks Seth, concerned, and Veronica nods. “Okay,” he mutters. “Well—happy new year.” He pecks her on the lips, still put-out but recovering. “I’ll get you some champagne.”

“Thanks.”

When he’s gone, her dad steps up to her. Keith’s harder to fool. “Honey?”

“It’s taken care of,” says Veronica again. She kisses his cheek. “Happy New Year, Dad.”

Parker pulls her into a hug next, “Happy New Year, Mars.”

“Happy New Year, Lee.”

Over her friend’s shoulder, she has a clear line of sight out the window, down and out onto the street. Logan, Jackie, and Wallace stand out under the lamp. Jackie has her arm looped through Logan’s, and they stand with their backs to the building, but Wallace faces them, hands in his coat pockets and shoulders hunched against the cold. He’s speaking, and she sees Logan nodding along with whatever it is he’s saying.

They’re helping. His friends are helping him.

“V?” Seth’s back, carrying champagne. She takes the glass, turns away from the window and back to the party around her. No one else seems to have noticed anything amiss. In the warm apartment, everything is still pristine and neat. Everyone mingles and converses, dinner party chatter about gym memberships and Nicorette. No guest too drunk, no element out of place: it’s like the scene in the hall didn’t even happen.

Veronica breaths deeply once— _onetwothreefour_ —

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loosely inspired by prompt #48), "Logan and Veronica are best friends that end up next to each other for the New Years kiss at midnight."


	4. Be My Baby (December 21st, 2017)

2017

 

 

Being a single lady in New York City certainly has its perks.

Veronica works too much to enjoy most of these perks, but she’s sure that they exist.

The single life also has its downsides—most of these involving the serial-killer related anxiety that accompanies living alone—but, considering she’s never _actually_ lived by herself before, Veronica is pretty sure she’s crushing it.

After eight months in her little apartment, she’s now accustomed to the strange noises the floors make _exclusively_ in the middle of the night, and, if she has to construct a minor stockade to reach the top shelves, at least there are no witnesses. Any idiot can break the seal on a sticking jar, and she never has to request through gritted teeth (for the millionth time!) that the remote control be put back on the coffee table after usage.

Anyway, Veronica has always been a self-sufficient person. She likes making her own schedule, likes cooking with her own tastes in mind, and is perfectly capable of fixing her radiator when it decides to break down in the middle of December.

Or at least, she would be.

If she hadn’t lent her toolbox to some uptown pretty boy who doesn’t own his own Allen wrench.

“You know, I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that you thought I was pretty,” is Logan’s highly typical smart-ass response to the accusation, which Veronica wields over the phone, so he cannot, unfortunately, observe the eye roll she directs at him.

“Logan. It’s twenty-three degrees outside and I need my grips, so you better get over here and give me my damn tools.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” says Logan, like he doesn’t grasp the severity of the situation _at all_. “I’m leaving now.”

“You can’t make it all the way uptown and back here in _twenty_ minutes,” argues Veronica. “I should really just have a key to your apartment at this point, Echolls, so we don’t find ourselves in these situations.” She wanders out of her tiny kitchen towards the uncooperative radiator in question. “Also, in case you choke on your vitamins and I need to break in to feed your dog.”

“I don’t have dog, and I don’t have to go home. I’ve got the toolbox here.”

“But you should _get_ a dog, since _your_ apartment is actually big enough for one. And why do you have the toolbox at your office?” She pokes one sock clad toe at the cold radiator, in the event that it’s magically decided to repair itself since last she checked. (It hasn’t.)

“Why would I need a toolbox at home? I’ve got a custodial staff and a maintenance manager with a double major in engineering and hotel management.”

“That’s absurdly specific.”

“Don’t you have some kind of landlord?”

“We don’t all live in West End Avenue penthouses, Echolls.”

“First of all, it’s not a penthouse, and second of all, I didn’t realize a landlord was an appurtenance of wealth.”

“A _what_ of wealth _?”_

“Appurtenance. Facet. Accoutrement.”

“ _Some_ of those are words,” Veronica allows. She leans over and tries the thermostat again, to no avail. “The landlord’s out of town for the holidays.”

“Then I guess you’ll freeze.”

“Just hurry up and get here.”

“You know if I died in the apartment, and I had a dog, you wouldn’t actually have to break in and feed it. It would eat...”

“I’m hanging up.”

She swipes out of the call over the sound of Logan’s laughter.

His prediction vis-à-vis travel time proves accurate enough, though, and he’s knocking on her front door not long after.

Veronica’s apartment is a cute little one bedroom on Lexington, sandwiched between a corner minimart and a somewhat less maintained apartment complex. She moved here at the beginning of April, fortuitously nabbing the place a short two weeks post _Break Up_ , before her crashing on Parker’s couch drove either of them _too_ crazy. She had to buy almost all of the furniture, figuring it was the least she could do to let Seth keep the bed and the TV, since she broke off their engagement and all, but the space is just about to her liking now, and, on her significantly reduced salary, she can make rent on her own. The radiator is temperamental though.

Logan arrives bundled up in his black coat and scarf—he _should_ have a hat; it’s going to snow again tonight, but the idiot probably didn’t want to muss his precious hair. He’s carrying her little red toolbox, along with his ubiquitous leather satchel.

“About time,” she says, when he walks in like he owns the place. She might feel self-conscious about her fuzzy bathrobe and sweats, but Logan was here when she had food poisoning on her birthday, so—really, there’s no pretense to be had anymore.

“What hostess-ry,” he quips, twirling to walk backward into the kitchen.

“Okay, I know _that’s_ not a word.” He sets his things down on the kitchen counter, then proceeds to set himself down on the couch in the living room. “How was work?” Veronica asks, opening up the toolbox and rummaging around for pliers.

“Work. You?”

“Same. You’re late, y’know, you didn’t forget about Parker and Mac’s, did you?”

“No, I just got stuck.” Logan exhales and drops his head over the back of the couch. “Do you have something to bring? I had a bottle of champagne at home, but I don’t have time to get it now.”

“I made desserts,” she tells him. “Someone sent me a bottle of fancy wine at work: you can bring that.” She locates the necessary item for her repair job and makes her way over to the offending utility attached to the living room wall.

“If I’d known this was such a casual affair, I’d have dressed warmer,” muses Logan from the couch, and Veronica throws an inquisitive look over her shoulder. He nods at her bathrobe—hardly up to snuff for Parker and Mac’s dinner party tonight—and Veronica turns back to the radiator.

“I didn’t want to get grease on my dress,” she explains. “You know, if you want to come over here and fix this, _I_ can go finish getting ready.”

It’s only a matter of changing clothes. Her hair and make-up were done by the time she noticed the apartment getting drafty and called Logan, but if she can pawn off a chore, God knows she will.

“I don’t know how to fix your radiator,” he points out.

“And with that attitude, you’ll never learn.”

She sits on the floor, legs crossed, and attempts her first repair, opening up the lock-shield valve with the pliers. While she waits to see if it’s been a success, Logan comes and joins her on the floor, back to the wall, elbows propped up on his knees. He’s removed his scarf and unbuttoned his coat, and Veronica catches a glimpse of the tie underneath.

“Is that what you’re wearing?” she asks.

“Unless you’ve got a dress for me to borrow.”

“You look like you just got out of court.”

“Ah, see, there’s a good reason for that. Do you want to hear it?”

The grate still won’t heat, and since Logan sits closer, Veronica hands over the pliers and points: “Twist off the thermostat over there, will you?” 

Logan looks skeptical, but he does as he’s told, and his expression of thinly veiled concentration as he finagles the cap off is endearing enough that Veronica decides to let him do the rest of the task, too. She scoots over, sliding against the hardwood floor, and says, “Okay, see that little pin there in the middle?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Is it stuck?”

He taps it gently with the pliers. “Yeah.”

“Okay, so use the grips and just kind of toggle it until—yeah, like that.”

When the pin is loose again, Veronica picks up the plastic thermostat cap and hands it back. Logan looks surprised, but screws it back into place. “That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“Such skills you possess.”

“This ain’t the half of it.”

“I’m sure.” Logan pushes up to his feet, then pulls her along after him.

“I gotta change,” says Veronica. “Have you eaten? You can rummage around the fridge if you’re hungry.” She leaves him in the kitchen, traverses the short distance to her bedroom. The salary of a Ross & Rice criminal defense attorney does not afford the same luxury accommodations as the Truman Mann corporate litigation paycheck used to, not even as much as the District Attorney’s office, so it’s no problem conducting a full cross-apartment conversation from her bedroom.

“You made _all_ of this?” Logan calls from the kitchen, while Veronica stands over her bed, contemplating the two dress options to which she’s narrowed down her selection. He must have found the cookies... and meringues, toffee, and rum balls.

“Yeah, I went on a spree. I had to listen to this interminable depo and—hey, don’t eat the ones on the counter, those are for the party!” And perfectly displayed on Christmas platters, wrapped in silver chiffon with a blue ribbon. If he messes up her beautiful arrangement...

“I’m trying the peppermint thing from the cookie jar,” Logan hollers back.

Peppermint meringue with chocolate ganache, to be precise. Veronica stashed the extras in the cookie jar and has no objection to Logan trying one, but she gripes anyway, “Those are my _later_ desserts.”

“You said I could rummage.”

“I said you could rummage in the _fridge_.”

“I don’t want your pizza leftovers.”

“Jokes on you, there’s cold Thai in there.”

Veronica settles on the red dress. The blue one is pretty, arguably more appropriate for a dinner party with friends, but the red is more... Christmas-y.

The fact that it’s also tighter, shorter, and has a more revealing neckline is utterly beside the point, because it’s not like she is specifically going out of her way to look sexy. She couldn’t care less about that.

She sits down on the bed and pulls on black tights, because it _is_ twenty-five degrees outside, and she’s not a total masochist. “Is the radiator heating up?” she calls out to Logan, who takes a moment to respond.

“Feels like it, yeah.”

She smooths the tights over her legs and catches the sound of the television.

“ _Holiday Inn_ is on,” Logan sing-songs. “We _could_ just stay here and watch it.”

“ _Holiday Inn?_ You mean Discount _White Christmas_? Hard pass.”

“Harsh. How about _Rudolph?_ ”

“How about _The Grinch_?”

“I know you’re making a crack about my personality, but if you have the Boris Karloff cartoon, I am absolutely game.”

Veronica pulls on her dress and examines her reflection in the mirror on the closet door. The dress is a deep red with long, sheer lace sleeves and a sweetheart neckline. It clings to every curve and falls above the knee, with a hint of a slit up one thigh. Her hair is as done as it’s going to get tonight, and all that’s required of her make-up is that she freshen her lipstick.

“I take it that’s a _no_ on the Grinch?” Logan asks from the next room. Veronica steps into black ankle boots and clicks back out into the hallway.

“I can’t believe I thought you were charming when we first met,” she says as she goes. “You are a hermit. You have the personality of an eighty-year-old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn.”

“Thank you,” chirps Logan from the couch, where he’s watching what looks like the worst print of _Holiday Inn_ in existence. “And I _was_ charming when we first met.”

“Conman.”

Logan opens his mouth to argue, but then Veronica steps into his line of vision, and his expression shifts to a grin that does _things_ to her insides. He lets out a low whistle, and she curtsies, like it doesn’t mean anything to her at all.

“Like?”

“Very nice,” he drawls. “Need me to zip you up?”

“ _No_. But I do need you to get the hook.”

Logan hops up from the couch, and Veronica turns her back to him, securing her hair up out of the way. When he messes with the hook, his fingers brush warm against her neck, and Veronica wonders what kind of sign it is that he’s not bashful in his appreciation of her dress. Because if he _did_ have “those kinds” of feelings for her, wouldn’t he be a little—shyer about it? Not that Logan is one to play coy... which is part of the essential problem, actually, because Logan _isn’t_ _one to play coy_ , so if he _did_ have “those kinds” of feelings for her... well, she’s been single more than eight months, and they talk almost every day...

Logic leaves her disappointed, as usual, but Logan’s mumbling voice (which Veronica definitely does not like _at all_ ) stirs her out of it, “Great dress.”

_Keep your shit together, Mars._

She turns back to him, drops her hair (short now, just above the shoulders, styled in loose waves), and crosses her arms. “You, on the other hand, are a mess.”

“Cruel.”

It’s a lie. He isn’t a mess, in his steel grey shirt and dark green tie, but he looks like he came from work, and he’ll certainly need some modifications before he’s Dinner Party Ready.

She tugs at the lapels of his coat to pull it off, which startles Logan a little, though he cooperates. “What are you doing?”

“Fixing you,” she says simply, tossing the coat onto the couch. She frowns and assesses, then reaches up to undo his tie. The four inch boost provided by her Aldos mitigates the height difference, and her knuckles rest comfortably against his chest as she pulls the knot free. She slides the tie down and tosses it onto the couch, then unbuttons Logan’s top button, all her focus on the task between her fingers and definitely not on his eyes, which are fixed on her, or the slight uptick of his mouth as she works. She undoes the second button and straightens his collar.

“Am I fixed?” murmurs Logan, amused, and Veronica shakes her head. She reaches up and fusses with his hair. It’s perfect, of course, but it needs to be a little _less_ perfect. She combs the tips of her fingers through his immaculately moused coif, so that it adopts the gently tousled look he prefers for more casual occasions. “Now?” he asks again, when she slides her hands down his shoulders, brushes away imaginary dust and wrinkles.

“Better,” she admits.

“Thanks.”

“What would you do without me?”

“Watch _Holiday Inn_.”

“You’re welcome.”

She steps away to collect her things and tells herself that this is a totally normal heartrate.

 

It was Wallace who ended up flying out to Los Angeles with Logan last New Years’ Day. Sat with him through an ultimately fruitless lunch with Academy Award Nominated Jessica Price, who’d been so sure that Logan’s father was a changed man, no matter what Logan told her about the guy. He’d returned to New York dejected and helpless, but far less bitter than Veronica would have been in his shoes, because seven months later, he was flying back out to California to testify on behalf of his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stepmother (two years his junior) in the Echolls-Price-divorce-custody-battle-media-circus extravaganza.

By that time, months free of her engagement, Veronica was the one to go with him. He slept on her dad’s pull out couch, actually, in the new condo. Two days in a painful deposition, recounting the most traumatic events of his life for asshole attorneys, followed by twenty-four hours of Mars Family Style T.L.C.—which mostly included board games, excessive amounts of Italian food, and cheesy 1950s Westerns.

And if Veronica held Logan’s hand for the whole flight home, it was only because she was being a friend. Because that’s what friends do. Support each other. Help each other. Harbor deep-seeded feelings for each other that manifest themselves in a physical ache that only seems to be appeased when in one another’s presence.

Totally normal stuff like that.

 

 

They bundle up and take a cab to Parker and Mac’s, because it’s too cold for anything else. Veronica isn’t one hundred percent certain when they decided to go to the party together, if they ever decided it at all. Lately, this sort of thing has adopted a predetermined feel. They’re always doing things together—they talk or text every day, hang out most weekends, and serve as each other’s default Plus One when the occasion calls for it (and even when it doesn’t, like tonight).

They aren’t dating—not each other, in any capacity official or otherwise. They’re friends. They’re _just friends_ , which is a phrase that Veronica hates, because it’s almost always applied to relationships where at least one party wishes they weren’t “just” anything.

The thing is, if Logan wanted something else with her, he would do something about it, wouldn’t he? Logan’s not a sit-on-the-sidelines type of guy at _all,_ and he seems perfectly contented with their relationship as is, just like he’s contented with his friendships with Jackie or Lilly or Parker or Mac.

_And why does he have so many women friends anyway?_

But then, also, she _knows_ that whatever is between her and Logan, even if it’s _just friends_ on his part, isn’t exactly like what he has with his other friends. It’s _not_. 

“So who sent the wine?” he asks, as they sit in the back of the cab, and he examines the label on the Bordeaux.

“Casey Gant.”

Logan makes a face. “Surprise, surprise.”

Veronica suppresses a smile. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. He was just _very_ attentive at that fundraiser.”

“So?” Veronica shrugs. “He donated a lot of money. You know we might not have been able to get the criminal defense division off the ground without his help...”

She is absolutely only doing this to get a rise out of him, so Logan, team player that he is NOT, doesn’t take the bait. His tone immediately evens out. “Very generous.”

“I thought so too.”

He’s utterly innocent as he adds, “I’m sure Gant would be thrilled that I’m re-gifting his Christmas present to Parker and Mac.”

Veronica matches his tone and turns to stare indifferently out the fogged window: “I’ll be sure to tell him next time we talk.”

 

 

Parker and Mac’s is as festive and warm as anyone would expect. The SoHo loft is done up for Christmas with a full-sized Douglas fir, holly and ribbon and lights hanging from every available surface. Parker looks like a Christmas tree herself, dressed in a green, red, and gold dress that she pulls off through sheer force of five-foot-eleven-blonde will. Mac is characteristically more understated in dark purple.

Logan and Veronica arrive fashionably late, so the party is already in full swing by the time Parker ushers them inside and takes their coats and presents.

Then they’re piloted around the room, and Logan does his bit, banters and smiles and shakes hands, _nice to see yous_ , counting the minutes until he can grab one to three of the six people at the party that he likes and not have to nod along to a conversation with strangers about De Blasio, Hollywood scandals, or the weather.

It’s Veronica who ends up cutting a conversation with one of Parker’s old sorority sisters short in order to steer them to a couch in the corner, though, and perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised: she’s genuinely uncomfortable with forced casualness, and not quite as adept at concealing the fact. Logan simply lacks shame for this propensity, whereas Veronica believes that social graces are a virtue. Maybe she’s right, but he hasn’t set his personal bar that high.

So they find their couch, armed with plates piled high from the buffet, and Wallace finds them. No Jackie tonight—she’s prepping for trial and stayed home with the kids.

And this scene, Logan doesn’t mind. People he likes; people who like him. Veronica and Wallace—he doesn’t deserve either of them, to be honest, but they seem to enjoy him alright.

Wallace has been his best friend since NYU housing stuck them together sophomore year of college... well, not _exactly_ since then. Logan was not what he would call his “best self” when he transferred to NYU to be closer to his mother and farther from his father, so it took a little while to establish a repartee that extended beyond Wallace thinking Logan was an entitled asshole and Logan living down to those expectations. Eventually, though, Logan managed to earn Wallace’s trust—at least some of it—and Wallace stuck by Logan when his mom died, made sure he didn’t _completely_ fall apart.

They lived together in Chicago while Logan was in law school; he introduced Wallace to the hot girl in his Constitutional Law class, was best man at their wedding.

And then, due to some inane, near Shakespearean mix-up at a Christmas party three years ago, Logan was mistaken for Wallace, causing him to miss his shot with the woman he’s entirely sure he’s going to love until he dies.

Which is downright unfair, if you ask Logan.

Said woman is in the middle of telling Wallace the story about the purse-snatcher in Central Park—Logan doesn’t know how Wallace has avoided hearing this one yet, it’s a great story, and Logan enjoys how Veronica tells it. She’s not really a bragger, for all her charisma and confidence, so it’s a treat when she does own up to her best qualities.

She looks great tonight. She always looks beautiful, but sometimes it’s impossible to ignore. That red lace dress is the eighth wonder of the world, and she’s matched it with one of her favorite little black leather jackets. Her eyes are all bright with the reflection of the gold twinkle lights that hang around the loft, glancing off her pretty blonde waves. She’s sipping white wine and has roses in her cheeks, and Logan’s glad he came.

At least, he’s glad up until Parker arrives and whisks Veronica away with something she “has to see,” and Wallace ditches him to take a call from his wife, and for a few minutes, Logan is left to his own devices. He’s trudging through a decent conversation with one of Mac’s techie friends who’s joined him on the sofa, when he sees Veronica weaving a path back over...

...Only to be thwarted by Lilly Kane’s insufferable brother, who offers her a refill of wine and draws her into a conversation over by the window.

Logan can’t help making a face. He doesn’t know Duncan Kane well, but he’s never been a fan. For a lot of reasons, like how he’s dry and boring and every word out of his mouth seems like it was approved-by-committee. Also, he always hits on Veronica... which would be well within his rights and all, except that he’s married to some banking fortune heiress and has no business looking at Veronica Mars like he’s casting his mistress.

Veronica thinks this is crazy and that Duncan has always been a perfect gentleman, and Logan will admit that Duncan lacks the nerve to actually try anything, but that doesn’t mean he’s not thinking it.

“Don’t worry, Echolls, Donut’s still married. Nothing to fear from the choir boy.”

Lilly Kane drops herself between Logan and the techie, effectively dismissing the latter, a vision as always in a clingy nude dress and blood red lipstick. Logan ignores her insinuation and accepts the kiss on his cheek that she offers.

“Lils. Merry Christmas”

“And a Happy New Year.” She toasts him with red wine and leans back, crossing her legs. “What do you say we make like undergrad and break out the tequila?” she says. “Turn this snoozer into a _real_ party.”

“You know, I’m surprised Mac let you through the door. She knows what you’re capable of.”

“Those parties were all part of my long game,” Lilly informs him. “In ten years, I’ll have half the senate stacked with former trust fund kids I can blackmail.”

“Goodbye, Estate Tax.”

Lilly snorts. “Not if St. Mars has anything to say about it. She’ll have me feeding orphans, just wait. You know, there’s a strong argument to be made that you and Mars have ruined me completely.”

“No one forced you to go non-profit,” says Logan, though this is a lie in spirit, if not in fact. When he’d dropped the hint to Lilly that Veronica Mars was leaving Truman Mann back in February, he’d been thinking V could leverage a job offer from Kane Landros for her pitch to develop a criminal defense team at Ross & Rice. He should’ve known that forty minutes and two servings of _duck confit_ later, Veronica would have recruited Lilly Kane away from a six-figure salary at her family’s national firm to share an office at an untested non-profit start-up providing low-cost legal representation for at-risk communities. Which, prior to that moment, had been a sentence chock-full of buzzwords that Lilly Kane had spent a lifetime excluding from her fabulous vocabulary.

She looks at him now, raises a penciled eyebrow to indicate that she knows he’s full of shit, and Logan laughs.

“So,” Lily begins, following a sip of her wine. “When are you two gonna stop dicking around and start—dicking around?”

“Tasteful as always, Lils.” He takes a swallow of his scotch to mask the avoidance.

“Oh come _on_.”

“Are we going to have this conversation every time we see each other now?”

“Until you can give me _one_ good reason why you and Mars aren’t... like... married by now, then—yes.” When he doesn’t dignify that with a response, Lilly huffs. “Oh, please, you’re in love with her.” _Irrelevant._ “And I’d bet my life she’s in love with you too. Well—maybe Duncan’s life: Veronica’s a little harder to read than you are, but I’m still pretty confident, is the point. Watch, I bet you five thousand dollars I can get her over here in thirty seconds or less.”

“Lilly...”

She interrupts him with a noisy laugh, which draws the attention of several bystanders, though not Veronica. “Oh, Logan, you are _too_ funny,” she says, just an octave too loud, then she leans over and places a hand on his arm, following the routine with another shout of laughter. Logan grins in spite of himself.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m _right_.”

And she is, at least partially, because out of the corner of his eye, Logan spots Veronica making her excuses to Duncan and pulling away toward himself and Lilly.

“That proves nothing,” Logan mumbles while he still has the chance. “Like anyone needs an excuse to escape a conversation with your brother. You’d do the same thing and you know it.”

“Sure, but everybody knows I’m a territorial bitch. It’s just that my sensors aren’t exclusively calibrated to ‘Logan Echolls’… _Hey, Mars, how are you?”_

“Kane, Logan,” Veronica greets with a little smirk, sauntering over. “What are you two over here conspiring about?” She seats herself on the edge of the coffee table before them.

“Logan was trying to pawn another sob story onto our desk,” Lilly lies effortlessly. “I told him that I’m not you, so he can’t just bat his eyes at me and expect us to work _pro bono_ every time. Every once in a while, the Sad Sack Mother’s League has to throw some money at us, or the partners get pouty.”

“Wow, Lils, you’re like a walking Christmas special,” says Logan.

“As long as it’s not a Hallmark movie,” says Lilly, “where I learn to put love before my career... or bond with an elderly relative.”

“I’m thinking _A Christmas Carol_ ,” muses Veronica.

“Ebeneezer Kane,” agrees Logan.

Lilly takes a prim sip of wine. “Trust me, when I have men in chains in _my_ bedroom, things go down a little differently.”

“We walked right into that one,” says Veronica, with a sad headshake.

“Actually,” Lilly goes on, “I might have gotten us a _little_ cash, schmoozing at my dad’s Christmas party this weekend. Doug Forbush was _very_ interested in our ‘project’ at Ross & Rice... although, I was _slightly_ tipsy, and I might have promised him a calendar.”

“A calendar?”

“Mhm. Picture it: Kane, Mars, Lee, and Cook. We might have to recruit some of the paralegals—and Kurt and Bronson I think could work. I’ll do November. I think I’d really pull off a sexy pilgrim look, and you’re so All-American, Mars, you’d _have_ to be July. What do you think?” she nudges Logan with her shoulder. “Red, white, and blue bikini?”

“I think you’ve put an _awful_ lot of thought into this, Kane,” says Veronica dryly. “Trying to get me into a bikini?”

“Almost always.” She downs the rest of her wine, then sets the glass on the table beside Veronica. “Welp—I’m going to go check out the talent. This party is a Tylenol PM, but I’ve found water in dryer deserts, and there’s no logic in wasting this dress on the only two people here who won’t have me.” She rises, kisses Veronica on the top of her head. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Princess Mars.” She pats Logan’s cheek. “Don’t forget that five grand you owe me, Dearheart.”

“Merry Christmas, Lils.”

“See you tomorrow, Kane.”

When Lilly’s gone, Veronica takes her place on the couch.

“So how was Duncan?” asks Logan, and Veronica smirks.

“Same as always.”

“That goes without saying.”

“I think it’s fair to say I got the short end of the Kane stick, conversationally speaking.” She reaches over and starts picking at the snacks on Logan’s plate. “Are you coming to the Christmas party tomorrow?” she asks, selecting a mini eggroll.

“I haven’t even left _this_ Christmas party yet and you’re trying to drag me to another one?”

“We’re having the office party at four,” Veronica goes on, ignoring him. “You should come. I can kick your ass at pool again.”

“You know, Mars, I have defeated you _many_ times in pool over the years...”

“Not _many_...”

“Well _multiple_ times, at any rate, and you never seem to remember those times. Why is that?”

Careful not to make a mess, Veronica scoops spinach and artichoke dip up with a tortilla chip. She chews and swallows before she replies. “Because you cheated.”

“I cheated?”

“Yep.”

“You’re a sore loser.”

“I made no claims to the contrary.”

Wallace makes his way back over then, and he takes up Veronica’s former spot on the coffee table. “Jackie says _hi_.”

" _Hi, Jackie_.”

“Veronica invited me to the Ross & Rice party tomorrow,” says Logan. “Any chance you’re going?”

Wallace leans over and selects a bacon wrapped date from Logan’s plate. “Nah, I gotta get my mom from the airport tomorrow. But you should go, Man. Y’know—say _hi_ to your wife and everything...”

“Oh shut up,” says Veronica, swatting Wallace’s hand. “I can’t believe you jerks still refuse to let that go.”

“I’m pissed that I missed you throwing a drink in his face,” says Wallace sadly.

“Not even real champagne. Easily the cheapest booze I’ve _ever_ had flung at me.”

“I hate you both,” complains Veronica, though it’s only Logan that she jabs with her elbow.

Wallace watches the gesture and tries to make eye contact with Logan, but Logan pretends not to notice. Wallace knows too much: he’ll have to be disposed of.

“Also,” Veronica carries on, “I don’t know why _I’m_ the one who gets the heat for that. It’s Parker’s fuck-up. I was acting on bad information.”

“Yeah, but Parker wasn’t the one who called him a—what was the phrase?”

“A _pathetic_ _piece of shit_ ,” says Logan, and Veronica groans.

Still, her eyes are dancing as she leans into him and mouths, _I’m sorry,_ extra dramatic. Logan pats her knee, magnanimous, and tries not to let the sugary notes of her perfume completely go to his head. Tries not to look at her lips—or her eyes, for too long, because that’s just as obvious.

Frankly, he’s aware that Wallace is probably rolling his eyes at them, but he decides he doesn’t really care.

 

 

Later than initially planned, though not by much, Logan and Veronica climb into a cab. There’s a pleasant warmth in his belly from good food and decent booze, which is fortunate, because it’s _freezing_ outside. Below freezing, actually, but Logan is still a Californian at heart, and after a certain point, he stops worrying about numbers and thinks strictly in terms of whether or not he should leave heated spaces.

Veronica gives the driver her address and grabs Logan’s arm to steal some of his body warmth.

“You should be wearing a hat,” she points out, and he looks down to see her fidgeting with her leather gloves.

“Says the girl shivering.”

She scoffs. “ _Oooh, look at me, I’m a boy, I’m never cold. I can’t admit if food is spicy, and I don’t ask for directions.”_

“Wow. Spot on impression, Veronica, you should do stand-up.”

“You know I’m right.” She settles in against his shoulder. “Did you have a good time?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.”

After that, she’s quiet on the drive home—home to _her_ apartment, not to his, because it’s on the way, and because he left his bag and tie there. Logan tunes out, watching the snow and listening to the staticky Christmas music over the radio, until she speaks up, a few blocks from her place.

“You wanna hang out? I have snacks. We can watch _The Grinch_ cartoon.”

She blinks up at him, and he weighs all pros and cons. “I don’t know. It’s kinda late.”

“ _Year Without Santa Claus_?” she offers. “The one with creepy claymation Fred Astaire?”

The cab driver is throwing him these looks in the rear-view mirror like Logan’s out of his mind for fighting this, and even though he doesn’t have the whole _context_ , he does have a point. There’s basically no one Logan would rather hang out with, watching animated Christmas movies or otherwise.

“Okay. But I get to pick the movie.”

So, after they’ve arrived at 39th and Lex, after cab drivers are paid and staircases climbed (three floors worth of them), Veronica disappears to her bedroom to change and Logan rifles through her cabinets. He mixes rum and cokes and stacks an assortment of Veronica’s baked goods onto a plate, grabs a bag of potato chips as an afterthought, and carries it all into the living room, where she joins him on the couch.

She’s put on leggings, a large STANFORD sweatshirt, and fuzzy blue socks with little snowmen on them. The socks disappear underneath her the second she sits down; then she grabs a pillow and her drink and looks over the snacks with approval. “Alright, what are we watching?”

“Krampus.”

“Vetoed.”

“You never said anything about veto rights.”

“Always assume that I have veto rights. Next.”

Logan, having removed his shoes by this point, stretches out his legs onto the coffee table. He pretends to consider: “Jack Frost.”

“Leave my home.”

“The Santa Clause _Two_.”

“And never speak to me again.”

“Jingle All the Way.”

Veronica levels him with a glare, lips pursed. “Miracle on 34th Street,” she says.

“That was my next pick.”

“Just see if it’s on Amazon,” she says, waving an arm at the TV, and Logan leans forward to grab the remote.

 

Veronica loves this stuff.

She’s got Christmas Spirit down _pat_ , and even though she makes a couple of cracks during the movie about “ _Where’s the deadbeat dad at, anyway?_ ” and “ _My mom sucks, but at least she never made me refer to her boyfriends as ‘Uncle_ ,’” she clearly enjoys it, sappy sentimentality and all. It’s the great Veronica Mars paradox that Logan’s come to know and love.

On screen, Kris Kringle is losing his patience during the psychiatrist interview, when Veronica leans her head against Logan’s shoulder, and it’s in the interest of her comfort—his shoulder isn’t exactly _soft_ —that he shifts and puts his arm around her. She settles in and asks, “Are you hating this?”

“What?”

“The movie.”

“No.”

“Are you thinking how this case would never go to trial?”

“Fred’s a hack.”

“Totally.”

She chuckles, then falls quiet again.

Logan’s problem is that he just doesn’t have nostalgia for all this stuff. He doesn’t _hate_ it; he has plenty of memories—some of them approximating fond—for the holidays... especially the movies, because God knows there was no event too small or large for young Logan to be planted in front of a television. But Christmas back then was always tinged with—drama, for lack of a better word. The whole season was Aaron-heavy, for one thing, and his mother was at her least equipped to cope.

When he was old enough (and he’s using that term liberally), the holidays were mostly an exercise in binge drinking and poor decisions. Later on, later in college, and through law school, he’d usually spend the vacation with whatever friend invited him to stay—a lot of time with the Fennels, sometimes with various girlfriends. It wasn’t so bad then, he kind of liked drifting through the peripheries of other people’s holidays.  

Now it’s just him, though. He’ll do Christmas Eve or Christmas dinner with Jackie and Wallace as often as not; Veronica wants him to come to Christmas brunch with her and Keith, who flies in Saturday night, and that’s—fine. It’s nice of her to invite him, and he’ll probably end up going because he really can’t say _no_ to her, especially when she's being sweet.

But now he’s old, he’s reached the age where it’s expected that, if he isn’t going to spend Christmas rehashing his childhood with his family, he should have established some traditions of his own. He wonders if it wouldn’t be easier being _completely_ excluded from everyone else’s holiday celebrations than it is being partially included. It’s nobody’s fault: he doesn’t mean to be maudlin about the thing. Truly, he doesn’t mind being alone, except when confronted with other people’s assumptions that he’s miserable. That’s difficult to handle.

He only bought a tree for his apartment because Veronica looked so sad when he said he wasn’t planning on getting one.

Veronica’s tree is in the corner to the left of the television, decorated with an amusing array of ornaments, most pretty and tasteful, some ironic, and a couple homemade. Jackie and Wallace’s youngest gave her a painted glass orb that he made, and it matches the one on Logan’s tree, except that Hank clearly ran out of room writing _VERONICA_ in glitter glue, and the last five letters are smooshed together, the _A_ barely visible at all. Other ornaments probably have interesting stories... there’s something made out of popsicle sticks with red paint and childish letters proclaiming _We Love Veronica!,_ doubtless a present from rescued orphans or the like. Talk about your walking Christmas special.

He grins down at her and resists the urge to kiss the top of her head.

A voice in his head that sounds a lot like Lilly calls him a sap.

Lilly isn’t _wrong_ , not for Logan’s part at least.

He’s been in love with Veronica for—a long time, he doesn’t need to get into _how_ long exactly, but a long time. Longer than he should probably admit to, at any rate.

She’s his best friend and just about his favorite person on the planet, and sometimes he senses that she might feel some of that back for him. Lilly obviously believes as much, but Lilly tends to be dramatic, and even she is _less than one hundred percent_ certain, if she’s only willing to stake _Duncan’s_ life on it.

He’s got to tell Veronica, though, at some point. It’s only fair to her, though the idea that he could be wrong, that she might hate him for ruining things between them, is a strong deterrent. He might be able to work past it, rationalize that he owes her honesty, but there are other things to consider. Like: how she was just _engaged to marry someone else_ not too long ago. Okay, eight months ago, but they were _engaged_ , and Veronica probably needs time and space, and she doesn’t need the people who are supposed to support her throwing curve balls like _by the way I’m madly in love with you and have been for a while and I briefly considered moving out of state when I thought you were marrying someone else but like no pressure, we’re cool, right_?

Because that’s as shady as it is doomed to failure.

The movie is approaching its finish, and Veronica drifts off to sleep just before Kris is declared legally Santa Claus. She’s using Logan as a pillow, with an actual pillow clutched against her chest. Her highball is mostly ice water now, the snacks predictably ransacked, and her breathing grows steady and scratchy.

He _has_ to tell her. Soon.

Logan waits until the credits roll, then switches off the television. He moves as little as possible, stretching to place the remote back on the coffee table, but Veronica stirs anyway. Mumbles something into his shirt and pulls her pillow tighter.

He wishes he didn’t have to be at work in seven hours.

“Mars,” he murmurs into her hair, and she grumbles, already waking up. “You gotta go to bed.”

She grumbles some more, indistinct.

“More importantly, _I_ have to go to bed.”

“Sleep here,” she mutters, but then starts to sit up. “It’s a comfy couch.” She pulls away enough that he can see her blink sleep heavy eyes at him.

“But what will people _say_?” he replies, dramatizing _scandalized_. Veronica stretches her arms into the air and yawns, then smiles lazily at him.

“But baby, it’s cold outside?” She yawns again, then heaves herself off the couch, gathering up dishes. Logan assists and follows her into the kitchen. “I can’t believe I fell asleep during the movie. I _never_ fall asleep during movies.”

“You’re all liquored up,” Logan teases.

“I am _not_.”

Dishes are placed in the sink, and Logan orders a car on his phone, then checks an ignored text. Veronica, of course, misses nothing, as she rolls up the chip bag and secures it with a clip:

“Who are you texting at this hour?” she asks, nosy as ever.

“No one.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not ly...” He shakes his head, because her mouth twitches skeptically. “Lexi texted me earlier. I just saw it now.”

Veronica’s eyebrows inch upward. “ _Lexi_ , huh? I thought you two didn’t really hit it off.” She turns to replace the chips in the cupboard, and Logan shrugs.

“We didn’t.” Lexi writes for a trendy online news outlet and wears full length skirts and hats with floppy brims. She was nice, but their one and only date felt kind of flat, and Logan had figured they’d mutually decided there was no real chemistry.

“So why is she texting you at one in the morning, hmm?” Veronica continues to push, now starting to rinse off plates in the sink. “Sounds like a booty call to me.”

Logan pulls up the text and reads. “She said, _hey whats up_ , no punctuation, at eleven-thirty, so...”

“Definitely a booty call,” concludes Veronica. She’s probably not far off base. However, Logan is not twenty-one, and he has to be at work in seven hours, so he slides his phone back into his pocket and comforts himself with an eye roll as Veronica coolly adds, “I hope I didn’t keep you from anything.”

That’s the sort of reaction that would make Lilly toss her head and shout, _see I told you so_ , because to Lilly’s zero-shades-of-grey histrionics, there’s no difference between V not liking the girls he dates and V being in love with him. Anyway, it’s too late and he’s too tired and his Lyft is four minutes out, so instead of saying, _nothing that can’t be rescheduled,_ just to be a dick, he says, “No place I’d rather be than sitting on your couch, having you drool on my shirt.”

Veronica gasps, outraged—mostly in jest—and turns to hurl a dishcloth at his head. Logan ducks, catches it, and laughs. “ _Slander_. There isn’t _any_ drool on your shirt.”

“Then I guess it was a wasted night.”

“I hate you.” She stalks over to him and snatches back the dishcloth, her disapproval completely unconvincing. Logan picks up his coat from the bar stool where he left it and shrugs his arms through. “Are you coming to our party tomorrow?” Veronica wants to know, trading the dishcloth for Logan’s scarf, which she then hands off to him. “It starts at four.”

“I’m in court tomorrow. We’ll see what time I get out.”

“Who’s the circus master?”

“Judge Foley.”

“Oh, Foley always sends everyone home by one-thirty. He lives on Long Island.”

“If I’m not too swamped,” says Logan, doubtful but sincere. He’d like to go, but things are crazy at the office just now. She hands him his bag, then scrapes her black fingernails around a piece of lint on his coat lapel. He says, “I can bring the seven-layer dip.”

Veronica smiles at his chest, because that’s where her eye-line lands. “Don’t bother showing up without it.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Well, we’ve saved Christmas, you’re welcome,” announces Parker, flouncing into Veronica’s office the next afternoon. Deeply entrenched in the New York City Administrative Code pdf, Veronica is a touch light headed when she tears her eyes away from the screen long enough to see that, despite the plural pronoun, Parker has arrived solo and is in the process of perching on the far corner of Veronica’s desk.

“Who’s ‘we’ and why did Christmas need saving?” she asks.

“Cook, Kane, and me. We destroyed the karaoke machine and hid its figuratively bloody corpse in the back of Kane’s car. God bless us everyone.” Parker adds a flourishing bow for drama, then swipes a caramel from the bowl on Veronica’s desk.

“I thought people liked karaoke,” says Veronica, returning her eyes, if only half her attention, to her laptop.

“They _used_ to. Lars has ruined it.”

“Well that’s true. Have you told him the blessed news?”

“No, but he’ll figure it out when he can’t find the machine.”

“You’re either underestimating or overestimating Lars, I can’t tell which.”

“Either way, the man must be stopped. He sang _three_ Journey songs at Jackie’s birthday, and we weren’t even doing karaoke.”

“It wasn’t even a party,” Veronica recollects, still disbelieving. “We were just eating cake in the breakroom!”

Parker shudders. She unwraps the pilfered caramel and pops it into her mouth, then relocates to the guest chair on the opposite side of Veronica’s desk.

“Did you have fun at my party last night?” she asks, very leading.

“Mhm.”

“Did Logan?”

“Seemed like it.”

“You should invite him to the party this afternoon.”

“I did. He’s working, though, he might not make it.”

“Oh.”

There’s a long pause, long enough that Veronica gets absorbed in her reading and momentarily forgets that Parker’s there. When she remembers, she looks up. “Don’t you have work or something?”

Parker rolls her eyes. “It’s...” She checks her watch, “Three fifty-seven. The party starts in three minutes.”

“So shouldn’t you get to it?”

“You’re not going to stay in here the _whole_ time...”

“I will if I don’t get my work done.”

Parker pouts.

“You know, Lee, not all of us have full support staff justified in the budget...”

“You can’t use that excuse for _everything_.”

“I’ll stop when it stops being true.”

“Fine.” Parker rises from the chair. “I’ll leave you alone. But so help me if you stay in here the whole time... plus, that cute guy who works upstairs and always asks about you is _bound_ to show up...”

“Are you trying to get me to hide in here or what?”

“Oh come on, you like the attention.”

“I really don’t.” Parker’s three steps from the door, and Veronica calls after her, “You know there are karaoke apps!”

“Oh, God. We’re going to have to fire Lars.”

She doesn’t make it through the doorway, though, because halfway out, she collides with someone walking in: a tall brunette, whose _Estée Lauder Eau de Evil_ Veronica recognizes before she gets a good look at the visitor’s face.

“ _Ver-on-ica_ Mars,” Angie Dahl draws out the syllables like she’s a villainous sorority girl in a 90s movie. “I thought I saw your name on the door. What a _cute_ little office!”

She ignores Parker completely and nudges her way through.

“I was just dropping off some papers for your boss,” coos Angie, clicking inside. “I could’ve sent one of my assistants, obviously, but I just _had_ to stop by and see you.”

Parker, standing behind the esteemed guest, makes a gagging expression, and Veronica hides a smile. There are some things that Veronica misses about the District Attorney’s office, and Angie Dahl is _not_ one of them.

“How are you, Angie?” sighs Veronica, weary and not in the mood to conceal it.

“Oh, it’s ‘Angela’ now. Angela Dahl-Fields.” She flashes a diamond ring at Veronica, and really, she should _not_ be giving Veronica this kind of ammunition. “I was _so_ sorry to hear about you and Seth splitting up. I know Richard was looking forward to seeing Seth’s family’s place again for the wedding...”

“ _Such_ a shame,” Veronica agrees, matching Angie’s bullshit tone. “But these things happen.”

(At least she’s spared a lifetime of summers at “the Cape” with the likes of Angie Dahl. Oh, sorry, _Angela_.)

“And I was so surprised to hear they let you go at Truman Mann,” Angie continues gleefully. Factually—not so accurate, but Veronica isn’t going to give her the satisfaction of defending herself. Besides, what would she even say? _Actually, Angela, I quit my job at Truman Mann because it was so soul-drainingly vacuous that at any given moment I was actively willing myself not to scream._

“I heard you’re at Sullivan these days,” she says instead.

“Yes, they _just_ gave me a new office.” She glances around Veronica’s space, the silent size comparison obvious.

Oh, poor, sweet, summer child has no idea how easy she’s making it for Veronica. “What about Richard?” she asks. “It must have been _so_ hard on him losing that state senate seat.”

Angie inhales sharply. “Well, he’s gotten a lot of offers...” It’s a weak, knee jerk reaction, she realizes her mistake after the words are out of her mouth. Everyone knows “ _he’s gotten a lot of offers”_ means he’s playing _Halo_ on the couch while he waits for people to call him back. “He’s pretty much settled on Goldman Sachs.”

“Oh, that’s good,” says Veronica, heavy on the benevolence. “Richard’s a smart guy, he’ll land on his feet.” Parker actually claps her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud. Time to give the knife one last twist. “And I’m sure he handled the defeat just fine. It was just the _state_ senate, right?”

Angie’s nostrils flair. “Well this has been fun...”

“An absolute ball.”

“...But I should get going.”

“Oh must you?”

“We’re just about to start the Holiday party,” says Parker, and Angie startles, apparently unaware that she was standing there. She hitches up the bag on her shoulder and, without so much as a stilted _Seasons Greetings_ , stalks out. Parker waits until she’s out of earshot before commenting, “You know if you’d married Seth, that bitch would’ve been at your wedding.”

“I’m painfully aware.”

There were upwards of a hundred reasons for Veronica not to marry Seth, but not having to consort with the likes of Angie Dahl is as good as most of them. The higher priority was, of course, that she didn’t love him—couldn’t even tell if she’d _stopped_ or if she’d never fallen in love with him in the first place. He’d seemed so perfect, she never really interrogated the matter. The important thing is, she wasn’t in love with him, and by the end, she didn’t even want to be. He’d deny it, of course, but Veronica suspects he didn’t love her either. He didn’t even seem to like or approve of her much, she doesn’t see how he could possibly _love_ her.

Parker leaves, and though Veronica does not make immediate good on her promise to join the party, she has every intention of doing so eventually.

Music kicks up soon thereafter, of the _Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree_ variety, and, through the open door, she sees her coworkers drifting out into the main area.

Per tradition, the rest of the building makes their way to the third floor before long—the two law firms downstairs and the ad agency upstairs, all converging on Suite 300. This is Veronica’s third Ross & Rice holiday party, though her first as an employee, and the first to be organized by Lilly Kane. Essentially what that means is that by the time that Veronica finishes her work and makes her way out to the party, forty-five minutes in, the office is nearly unrecognizable.

There’s some kind of beer pong tournament in the boardroom, and a handful of couples are dancing to The Ronettes in the lobby next to the paralegal cubicles. There’s a chocolate fountain in the annex off the breakroom, food and booze set out just about everywhere you look—not just the variety of homemade desserts like Veronica brought in, or the gift baskets sent from various business associates, but an elegant spread of snacks and appetizers. The company has a shoestring budget for office parties, so most of this must have come out of Lilly’s wallet. Fabulous and Prada as that wallet is, Veronica makes a note to write Kane a check for a share of all this.

In the kitchen, she finds a bowl of punch that isn’t so much spiked as it is watered down, sweetened rum, and Veronica opts for prosecco. She’s eavesdropping on Lars the paralegal’s attempts to convince one of the executive assistants to initiate karaoke, while internally wondering whether pairing a salted toffee sugar cookie with hot wings would ruin both, when someone taps her on the shoulder and she jumps.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he says, and Veronica doesn’t actually recognize the voice until she turns and finds herself confronted with Piznarski.

The surprise of the thing affords her scarcely any time to school her features into something more pleasant than “irritated,” though she manages before he catches on.

Piz—and yes, he willingly introduces himself as such—works at the advertising agency upstairs... some kind of copy writer or—illustrator? God, Veronica really doesn’t know, even though she’s sure he’s told her before. They run into one another in the elevator from time to time, and though their relationship is limited to small talk, it hasn’t escaped her notice that Piznarski tends to seek her out when the opportunity arises.

“Hi, Piz, how are you?” she says, and swallows the rest of her prosecco.

“Pretty good. Merry Christmas!” He initiates a one-armed hug that Veronica isn’t entirely sure is warranted, but... whatever. “Great party, huh?” He’s swirling a clear, sparkly liquid with a wedge of lime in a plastic cup, dressed in compliance with the yuppie dress code of plaid shirt, tie, and chocolate colored corduroy Dockers.

Veronica offers some prosaic agreement and pours herself a little more prosecco.

“Your office looks awesome,” he goes on. “Upstairs we just have a little plastic tree on the reception desk. Kinda lame. Although, I can’t help but notice that there is _one_ holiday tradition missing from all of this...”

_If she starts with the hot wings and then has the cookie as dessert, she should still be able to enjoy the best of both savory and sweet..._

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“No mistletoe.” Piz points at the ceiling, then stuffs his hands in his pockets and shrugs, faux awkward. Veronica’s beginning to think that shtick doesn’t work for _anyone_. She uses tongs to select chicken wings from the platter on the nearest table.

“Well, we’re a law firm,” she says. “Probably seemed like a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen.”

“Oh, yeah of course.” Piz’s artificial bashfulness morphs into genuine discomfort, and Veronica tries not to take pleasure in that. She doesn’t try very hard, but she does try. “No, yeah, totally, I am totally—like—against that stuff,” he stumbles on.

“ _Really_?”

(He must not catch her sarcasm.)

“Oh, definitely.”

Veronica grabs a couple more hot wings, not because she particularly wants them, but because leaning over the table to serve herself means he can’t see the face she’s making. _If he starts bragging about going to a women’s march, I swear to God..._

“So do you have any plans for Christmas?” Piz asks, when Veronica refrains from giving whatever expression of gratitude or congratulations he expected for his brave stance against “that stuff.” “Traveling? You’re from California, right?”

“My dad’s flying out here tomorrow night,” she tells him.

“Oh, cool. I’m headed back to Portland tomorrow.”

“Is that where your family is?” Veronica asks, mostly to fill silence. The assistant who Lars was haranguing with assurances that everyone totally loves when he sings every verse of “American Pie” has finally made her escape, and Lars has turned his attention to the security guard from the lobby. Veronica wonders how difficult it would be to pawn him off to Piz.

“Uh-huh. Good memory.” Piz beams, and Veronica doesn’t point out that it wasn’t so much memory as basic logic. “So do you have any new year’s plans?” he presses her.

“Yeah.” She takes a large bite of chicken wing and doesn’t elaborate.

 

It’s ten minutes before Veronica is able to slip away, and if she does so by pretending to receive a text, at least she puts effort into the performance. Manners cost nothing, after all.

Which is why, when she’s searching for her friends and spots Piz scanning the crowd with a very determined look in his eye, she has no choice but to duck into the nearest cubicle and curl up in the executive chair at the desk. Because, _manners_.

She’s silently judging the excessive array of potted mini succulents on this desk when Parker’s voice cuts through the rest of the noise: “—The difference is that Mac’s parents are the fun kind of Jesus freaks, where they wear flannel and unironically use _prayer hand_ emojis. _Mine_ are the kind who read the Bible strictly so that they can refer to people as the ‘Whore of Babylon.’”

“Ugh, I’m sorry... You should introduce them to _Kane_.”

“Hey! Wait—no, that doesn’t offend me, never mind, carry on.”

That’s Jackie and Lilly respectively, their voices drifting over from one of the adjacent cubicles—the one directly across from Veronica, she thinks.

“Actually,” Lilly continues, “you totally _should_ introduce me. In high school, my friends used to invite me over to their houses, just so that their parents would see how good and well-behaved their kids were by comparison. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have anyone to bring over to appease Celeste.”

“Well, in the unlikely event that my parents ever deign to set foot in New York, I’ll be sure to bring you in as a ringer,” says Parker.

“My true calling in life,” says Lilly. “Well, that—or as a Lara Croft style archaeologist. Or a matchmaker—you know you can go to school to become a matchmaker? Ugh, law school was such a _waste_.”

At that, Veronica is about to stand up and alert her friends to her presence, but just as she’s climbing out her chair, Parker starts on a new topic, and it’s one that gives Veronica pause. “Speaking of: you guys met my friend Claire last night, right? She asked me to give Logan her number.”

Veronica hesitates... just in case this gets interesting.

“So did you give it to him?” asks Jackie idly.

“No, he’d already left by that point,” says Parker. “And I told her that he was seeing someone.”

Veronica drops fully back down into the chair, because she definitely wants to eavesdrop on _this_.

 _Seeing someone?_ Logan’s not _seeing someone,_ he would’ve told her if he were seeing someone... that Lexi girl doesn’t count. He’s not “seeing” her. He “saw” her. One time. That’s not _seeing_ someone. It’s not the same thing at _all_.

Jackie apparently shares her disapproval. “ _Parker.”_

“What?”

“You know what.”

“Oh come on, he _practically_ is,” grumbles Parker, and it’s only the overpowering desire to snoop that stops Veronica from jumping up and setting Parker Lee straight. “And how is it any worse than you telling Casey Gant that Veronica doesn’t date our donors?”

_Wait, what?_

“That wasn’t a _lie_ ,” says Jackie. “I have never, in my experience, witnessed Veronica dating a donor.”

“That’s because most of our donors are three-hundred-year-old widows.”

“You two are stupid,” is Lilly’s hot take (usually, and in this situation too). “You’re going about this completely wrong. You shouldn’t be protecting them; you should be forcing their hands. You should be setting them up with every Victoria’s Secret model and New York Ranger that you know.”

“Exactly how many Victoria’s Secret models and New York Rangers do you imagine that we know?” asks Jackie.

“You get my point. Light a fire under them.”

“Not everyone is you, Kane,” says Parker. “Not everyone gets off on jealousy and rage.”

“Um—yes they do,” says Lilly. “That’s why love triangles are the number one plot device on television.”

“And _why_ did you and Logan break up again?” asks Jackie.

“Not relevant.”

“I think it might be.”

“Well,” scoffs Lilly, “it doesn’t really matter anyway, because...”

“Oh God, here it comes...”

“...I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: they’re already hooking up.”

“They are not,” says Jackie, the eye-roll evident in her voice. “You just think everyone is constantly having sex with everyone else.”

“Because they are.”

“They are _not_ hooking up,” says Parker. “Veronica would have told me.”

“Maybe they’re keeping it a secret,” says Lilly. “In like—a kinky way.”

“They’re not,” says Jackie, very certain. “No one pines like Logan.”

_Pines? Logan pines? Logan’s pining?_

 “You might be right about that,” admits Lilly, begrudging. “ _Unless_... he’s still pining, because they’re not _official_.”

 Veronica rolls her eyes. She is going to strangle her rude, gossiping friends... just as soon as she gets to the bottom of this Logan “pining” business.

“What are you talking about?” asks Parker, weary.

“It could totally happen,” Lilly insists. “They’re hooking up, but it’s casual, and he wants more, but Mars just dodged the marriage bullet, so she’s keeping her options open...”

Veronica’s stomach clenches—the fact that Lilly would even _say_ that…

Parker, fortunately, comes to her defense: “Veronica wouldn’t do that.”

And Jackie’s quick to follow: “Yeah, you’re kind of projecting there, Kane.”

“Oh, come on...” There must be some kind of nonverbal communication then, because Lilly scoffs, “What, are you guys mad at me? There’s nothing _wrong_ with keeping your options open.”

“Veronica wouldn’t lead him on,” says Parker, and _yes, thank you._

“Lead him on? Oh come on, that’s...” Lilly breaks off, again, picking up on some cue that Veronica can’t see. “Wow, you two are bummers.”

“And even if she _were_ ,” says Jackie. “Logan wouldn’t put up with that shit. He’s not twenty-three anymore, y’know.”

“ _Wow_ , pointed much, Cook?”

“Guilty much, Kane?”

“Let’s not fight,” says Parker. There’s another protracted silence, and then Lilly huffs a sigh.

“Fine.”

“It’s none of our business anyway,” says Jackie, and _again, yes, thank you_. (Although if they did want to return to the thing where Logan is “pining” and elaborate on that and give specific examples, Veronica would find that very helpful.) “They can work out their issues on their own.”

“Beg to differ,” hums Lilly. “But I’ll stay out of it. Although... just saying, I _do_ know Nina Agdal...”

“ _No_.”

“God, fine, I’ll stay out of it. Pour me some more of that, will you?”

And then they’re off onto something else—settlement negotiations or something—Veronica tunes it out. Her stomach is still twisted into knots, and she’s lightheaded all of a sudden: dizzy and overwhelmed and the slightest bit pissed off, but also kind of... what’s the feeling? Nauseous?

Whatever it is, she knows for a fact that she has to get out of here. She stays low as she vacates the executive chair, slinks out of the cubicle—doubtful her friends would see her anyway—and makes a beeline for her office. She stops there long enough to throw together her bag and coat, then is halfway to the exit before she decides to make a detour to Parker’s office.

She might feel guilty for rifling through her friend’s desk, then stealing a contact from the rose gold iPhone she finds under a stack of legal briefs, but all things considered, Veronica decides she breaks even, karmically speaking.

(Piznarski nearly catches her at the door, but Veronica pretends not to hear him and then sprints towards the elevator.)

There isn’t a cab to be had, and even if there were, it’s only—what, six blocks, and traffic’s a nightmare. Anyway, it’s barely snowing.

Of course, after a few blocks, “barely” snowing starts to add up, and at her fastest clip, her hair’s pretty wet by the time she reaches the office off Church Street. Somehow, she’s freezing and overheated at the same time when she pushes through the heavy glass doors and into the office lobby. Anita’s at the front desk as always. She’s already wearing her coat, but she’s standing and talking on the desk phone, and she smiles and nods at Veronica. She shifts the receiver on the phone to her chest and whispers, “Here to see Logan?” and before Veronica can even confirm, says, “Go on up, he won’t mind...” Then into the phone again, “ _Yes, Mr. Rawlins, and as I told you, we’ll’ve made a decision by the end of the year_...”

Veronica’s practically shaking all through the elevator ride up. She takes off her gloves and stuffs them in her coat pocket, doesn’t rehearse anything to say because every time she does, she starts to get this weird twitching feeling in her throat and _what the hell, a little improv never hurt anyone._

She second guesses that philosophy when confronted with Logan’s office door, but she knocks before she can talk herself out of it.

When twenty-five seconds pass and Logan doesn’t _answer_ the door, she begins to realize she might have made a couple critical errors in judgment. Like, okay, yes typically Logan is in his office until _at least_ seven, but just because that’s typically the case doesn’t mean it’s _always_ true...

When she tries the knob, she finds the office unlocked and empty. So—maybe she should have called.

It’s the Friday before Christmas, of _course_ he went home at five. Maybe he went straight home after court, honestly. It’s not like he made any promises about coming to the Christmas party; she doesn’t blame him.

She looks the darkened room over, ostensibly tracking for clues that he might be coming back. The office is small and ugly, but very neat. Few personal items on the desk: no photographs, just a rubber ball with a Dodgers logo and a silver lighter. There’s a magnet on the file cabinet, though—a little plastic Frankenstein head from a wax museum up north. She had to stay at Lake George for a case earlier in the year, and she brought it back for him as a souvenir. Not exactly the most romantic token, in retrospect.

She nearly jumps out of her skin when the lights flip on.

“ _Shit_.”

Logan’s smirking at her from the doorway, and Veronica waits for a wiseass remark that never comes. She sees why a second later: he’s got his cell propped between his ear and his shoulder. He’s not wearing a coat, just his dress shirt with the sleeves rolled quarter mast, tie hanging loose. He holds a paper coffee cup in one hand and a take-out container in the other—likely procured in the building, given the lack of outerwear—and he’s mhm-ing into the phone as he kicks the door closed and sidles around Veronica in route to his desk.

“Yeah, I think we’re on the same page,” he says, “So, I’ll just e-mail you the list of names and we can talk—no, it’s a short list... yeah. Yes. Right. Okay.” He rolls his eyes for Veronica’s benefit, “Absolutely. We’ll—right—we’ll talk Tuesday. Right. Okay. You too. Bye...” He hangs up and explains, “Morris O’Malley. He _really_ wanted to _chit-chat_. _”_ He jerks his chin at Veronica, hitting her with a grin that’s never failed to give her butterflies. “What are you doing here?”

And the funniest thing happens then—Veronica’s nerves just sort of evaporate. It’s _Logan_ , after all. She can handle Logan. “Not happy to see me?” she teases, and he sets down his coffee cup on the desk.

“Depends, I’ve seen you be the bearer of bad news. It’s not pretty. How was the party?”

“Fine.”

“Did Lars sing karaoke?”

“No, we destroyed the machine.”

“Wise move.”

“But...”

“Uh-oh.”

“He was negotiating an acapella _My Heart Will Go On_ when I left him.”

“Well it’s not a party until Lars has ruined it.”

“We might have to fire him.”

Logan chuckles, but that’s the end of that thread, and they’re both quiet for a moment. It can’t have escaped his notice that Veronica hasn’t actually answered his question about the purpose of her visit, and while she no longer feels sick to her stomach, she _is_ having a little trouble—getting started.

“So... what’s up?” he asks, after another beat.

“Hmm?”

“You...” He does a rolling gesture with his hand, inviting some explanation, “...you were in the neighborhood or...?”

 _Sure, that’ll work_.

“Yes. Yes, I was—gonna get a sandwich from Genova.” She points with her thumb—the wrong direction, incidentally, Genova Deli is west of here, but Logan doesn’t correct her geography. “And I thought I’d drop off your Christmas present.”

She reaches into her bag where she stashed the box and leans forward to hand it over. A crease forms across Logan’s forehead, confused and maybe a little concerned, “Oh, yours is at my apartment, I thought since... I was going to come by on Monday, but...”

“Oh, no, you’re still coming over on Monday,” Veronica interrupts hastily, lest he think the invitation has been rescinded.

“Oh...”

“I just—since I was... getting the sandwich and all.”

“Right.” Logan contemplates the package in his hands.

“You don’t have to open it now,” she adds.

“So you’re just going to hand me a gift that I can’t open?”

“I mean you can if you _want_.”

Logan’s frown deepens. This is not going well at all. “Are you good? You didn’t let Lilly make the egg nog, did you?”

“Punch, actually, but I stuck to prosecco.”

“Did you throw it in anyone’s face?” he asks.

“Course not. That’s our thing.” He smiles, and Veronica’s heart swells. “D'you want to get a sandwich with me—from the deli?” she asks, then immediately realizes her mistake:

Logan nudges his take-out container. “I just got a salad downstairs.”

“Yeah, but a salad is so depressing.”

“Hey, there’s chicken—look.” He flips the lid, and Veronica shakes her head.

“Not only do you have the personality of an eighty-year-old man, you have the diet of a twenty-two year-old Instagram model.”

“Thank you.”

Veronica reaches into her bag and withdraws the note that she wrote earlier. After a deep breath with which she steels herself, she says, “There is one other thing.”

Logan, fidgeting with the corner of the wrapping paper on his present, glances up. “What’s that?”

“Parker’s friend Claire—from the party last night? Remember her?”

“Um—vaguely. The doctor, right?”

“PhD.” _In Russian poetry, it’s not like she’s out there saving lives._ Veronica reaches over to hand him the note. “She wanted Parker to give you her number. I guess she liked you or—whatever.”

“Oh.” Logan takes the note. “Okay. On a post-it.” The paper sticks to the pad of his index finger and he frowns at it, like he’s somehow unfamiliar with this ritual. Like he hasn’t had dozens of women give him their numbers since he hit puberty. “I didn’t know they made turquoise post-it notes.”

“The jewel tone pack. They were on sale at Staples.”

“Gotcha.” He sticks the note to his desk, pressing all four corners down until it lays flat. “Well, thanks, I’ll...”

“You shouldn’t call her,” Veronica blurts out, before he can say anything else.

“Why not, what’s wrong with her?” He’s still running his finger along the perimeter of the post-it, reading over the numbers like he’s trying to memorize them or something, and he doesn’t seem to have noticed that Veronica is—struggling a bit.

But _Jackie_ said it. _Jackie._ Not just Parker or Lilly who, let’s face it, live for drama. _Jackie_ said he loves her.

She’s just really, really bad at this.

“Veronica?”

He’s looking at her again.

“Because...” God, is he really going to make her _say_ it? “Because—you and I had a deal.”

Logan cocks his head to one side. He crosses his arms, and his posture relaxes deceptively. Appearances to the contrary, he’s very alert right now. “We did?”

“Uh-huh. We made a bet, and the terms were that whoever lost had to buy drinks. And you lost, so... you have to buy me a drink.”

“A bet.”

“Yes.”

“You’re talking about—three years ago.”

“Yes.”

There’s a moment—probably only a few seconds, but it seems infinitely longer, when Veronica is uncertain that he’s understood her. Then another moment, so much more terrifying, when Veronica knows that he’s understood her, but can’t tell how he feels.

“Okay,” he says eventually. He nods, then steps around the corner of his desk. “So, you’re saying that I shouldn’t go on a date with this—Claire person, because I owe _you_ a date.”

“Yes.”

“I see.” He’s advancing on her slowly. “Well—that... is flawless logic.”

Her heart skips a beat at that, but she tries not get her hopes up. “Yes.”

“I really can’t argue with it.”

“No you can’t.”

He’s stepped right up to her now, and he reaches out and slides the strap of her bag off her shoulder, guiding the briefcase gently to the floor. Her hopes are decidedly up. “I mean, I could hypothetically point out...”

“No.” She grabs his tie, pulling his mouth down to hers.

And—God.

Finally.

Just— _finally_.

He presses against her, tender and slow for long, sweet seconds. Then she parts her lips, demands more, and Logan obliges. He cups her face with big warm hands, and pulls her deeper, and the pounding in her chest surges, changes, not anxious anymore but exhilarated. She draws him as close as she can, molds him to her, desperate after all this time.

He shifts just enough to catch his breath, and she whispers, “Why didn’t you say anything?” while he places gentle kisses over her mumbling lips. She closes tight fists around bunches of his shirt, captures his mouth with hers, determined and hungry.

“Didn’t want to lose you,” he murmurs between kisses.

She wants to tell him that’s stupid: he couldn’t, she’d never, but it all gets lost somewhere. His tongue runs over her bottom lip and her head goes fuzzy, even as her body roars to life, insists on more.

 _He loves her_ —the certainty spreads through her, warms her like a glass of champagne would, and emotion pitches and bursts inside her. She loves him so much, and _helovesher_ , and nothing has ever made her so happy. Kissing him is the best feeling in the world, she could do this forever.

But not literally.

Eventually, he does pull away, rests his forehead against hers. She still keeps her eyes squeezed shut, because it’s wonderful, but it’s close to overwhelming her. His lips brush over her cheek, “So you wanted to get a drink, hmm?”

She has to bite her lip to stop from honest-to-god _-_ _giggling_ when he kisses the tip of her nose. “Or we could skip the drink and go back to my place,” she suggests.

“I dunno, I don’t want to be accused of backing out of a bet...”

She lets herself look at him when he leans away. His eyes are dark and happy, his mouth hovers in a breathless smile. He smooths hair away from her face, thumbs stroking her cheekbones. No one else has ever made her feel half of this.

“You’ll make it up to me.”

 

* * *

 

She was wrong about one thing.

Kissing Logan is not the best feeling in the world. Strong third, though.

Her bedroom has a window that looks out onto Lexington, and through the gap in the curtains, the electric orange glow of streetlamps illuminates half the room. Falling snow casts moving shadows on the wood floor, and Veronica watches, aware that it will be light in just a couple hours and that she should probably get some rest.

Logan’s awake too. Though his breathing is slow and even, he’s drawing patterns on her belly with his fingertips. He’s so _comfy_ , wrapped around her under the blankets, big and strong and solid. Cuddly, too, which she’s really liking—

“ _Should sleep_ ,” she murmurs and burrows deeper into the pillow. Whether she’s talking about him or her, she doesn’t know.

Logan responds first by nuzzling her neck, then with a drowsy agreement, echoing her word, “ _Should_.”

It’s been _hours,_ and her body feels heavy, deliciously spent, cocooned in blankets and boyfriend— _he’s her boyfriend, she’s decided_ —with nothing stopping her from drifting off right now. Except that she feels _just about_ perfect, and she can’t shake the irrational fear that if she closes her eyes and lets go, she’ll wake up tomorrow—today—to find that this has all been some kind of dream... that there's been some kind of mistake, and Logan doesn't love her after all. She can’t go back to not having him, having him is too nice, but some part of her is afraid that this isn’t how the world works. She doesn’t get to have nice things—nice boyfriends she loves so much it hurts, that love her back.

As if to confirm the hypothesis, the weight and warmth of Logan’s body suddenly recedes. She turns to investigate as to why, but he’s only shifted a little, adjusting the blanket around her, tucking her in, before his arms slides back over her hip and draws her close again.

Or maybe for once, this _is_ how the world works: he loves her back and all is well. It's almost easy to believe, when he holds her like she's precious to him, breathes passionate words into the darkness.

Anyway, she’s too tired to fight sleep and optimism any longer.

If it’s a dream, it’s a good one. If not—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #49 - Veronica brings a special Christmas present to Logan at the office.  
> #85 - The heater broke and it's freezing, get over here (slightly modified)


	5. Having a Party (December 15, 2018)

 

2018

 

 

“Logan, why is Mrs. Secola from 2C on our couch comparing tattoos with Eli?”

Veronica has to squeeze around Bronson and Carmen, chatting about adverse jury potentials next to the island kitchen counter, to pose the question to Logan, currently situated with his back to the referenced scene as he rummages around the cabinet. The noise level in the apartment—jam packed with what feels like everyone they know—is such that even with such limited distance between Veronica and the topic of discussion, she has no fear of being overheard.

Logan throws a look over his shoulder at Mrs. Secola, their aged and cantankerous downstairs neighbor, making chitchat in the living room with Eli Navarro. Then he shrugs. “Shared love of ink?”

“I mean more _generally_. As in—why is Mrs. Secola from 2C sitting on our couch at all?”

Logan begins to pull down a set of tumblers from the top shelf, arranging them out in a neat row on the counter in front of him. “She came by to complain about the noise, so I invited her in for a beer.”

“You invited her in? Mr. ‘Our Friends are a Fire Hazard’ invited someone _else_ into the apartment?”

“You mock me...” He turns to fill a glass with ice from the fridge, “...but Lilly’s smoking on the fire escape, and she is careless with cigarette butts. Anyway, it’s purely mercenary, couldn’t have Secola calling the cops on me.”

“That's probably wise,” Veronica admits. “And here I thought it was the Holiday spirit.”

“Never.” He inclines the bottle of whisky over the first tumbler, then hesitates: “Who am I pouring this for again?”

“Beats me.” Veronica shrugs and lifts her wine glass at him to indicate that she’s taken care of.

Logan turns and calls over his shoulder, “Who wanted whisky?” and is met with a chorus of three or four _Me’s_ from the living room. He shrugs and starts pouring.

Veronica bites down on a smile. She places a little kiss on his bicep, then maneuvers around him to complete her original mission in coming to the kitchen: refilling the chip bowl.

Logically, it probably would have made more sense if, when Logan and Veronica decided to move in together, they’d moved into Logan’s place. For one thing, it’s a bigger apartment, and for another, he actually owns it. But Veronica had loved her apartment, and Logan loved her, so he moved in here instead. To compound the issue, they have Penny now—the wire-haired terrier mutt currently begging for Wallace’s attention over near the Christmas tree—but they make it work. In Veronica’s experience, that’s all you can really do.

Logan finishes pouring the scotch, then carries the glasses two-by-two to the island counter, announcing the accomplishment for the room at large, before sidling up to Veronica. He slips an arm around her waist and kisses the spot on the back of her head most readily available.

Quiet, just for the two of them, he says: “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“How are you?”

“Good, how are you?”

“Good.”

She’s finished with the chips, but doesn’t move away just yet—not for sentimental reasons, but out of self-interest. Half the apartment is freezing now, as Lilly’s opened the window from the fire escape, because God forbid anything happen without her, and Logan’s got body warmth to spare. Parker is standing over by the window, lecturing Lilly about it from inside, while Lilly’s date looks on, anxious. He’s some bland but unobtrusive hanger on to the Yankees... a physical therapist, Veronica wants to say? Poor guy, no one’s bothered to learn much about him.

Kurt collects two glasses of the whisky and hands one off to Mac, and Jade comes to grab the other two, one for herself and one for Eli, still inexplicably embroiled in conversation with their seventy-five-year-old downstairs neighbor.

Wallace is regaling Jackie and Mac with the antics of a couple of his students, though Veronica can’t catch many specifics, over all the other noise and Sam Cooke on the sound system... Mrs. Secola _might_ have had a point.

Logan’s mind must be similarly occupied, because he murmurs to her, “Hey, remember when we were just going to invite a couple people over and open a bottle of wine?”

“Mmm, vaguely.” She allows Logan to pick up her left hand, run his thumb over her ring finger as he dips his head and kisses her neck lightly. “But this way no one gets mad when it’s only you, me, and Dad at the courthouse.”

“And Penny.”

She shifts, leans back against him so she can kiss his chin. After a moment, she decides, “I like you.”

“I like you too, but don’t think sweet talk will get you out of your half of the dishes.”

“Oh, we’re not doing dishes. We’re throwing everything out.”

“So who’s taking out the trash?”

“Good point, maybe we should just move.”

“Maybe Lilly’ll burn down the building for us.”

“Problem solved.” She glances back out at their guests—and they really are a bunch of fire hazards, but it takes one to know one, so.

At any rate, for now, things are good.

Rough around the edges, and quite often a bit of a mess, but Veronica takes a sip of wine and holds onto Logan, and decides to enjoy the party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because there is no deadline too generous for me to run up against, and what everyone wants is Christmas fic in late January.  
> All of the very many mistakes are my own.  
> <3


End file.
